


End Times

by devovitsuasartes



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 22:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 94,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovitsuasartes/pseuds/devovitsuasartes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>72 days remain before the world is destroyed. The actions of three men, each broken in his own way, will decide whether we all live or die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains no pairing tags or archive warnings because I feel they'd probably give away too much about the plot. It picks up from the end of _Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood_ with Desmond staying awake rather than falling into a coma. The other major divergence from canon will be clear by the end of the first chapter.

**10th October 2012**

'... An historical document from the French revolution entitled 'The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen', approved by the National Constituent Assembly in...'

'Shaun. Shaun!'

'Just hear me out, this might be relevant...'

'Shaun, Lucy's hurt!'

Their words were muffled, as though Rebecca and Shaun were speaking in another room. Desmond came back to himself, slowly, as though he too had been frozen in time. The ceiling of this place was very dark between the blue patterns, and the back of his right hand lay in a warm, thick puddle that was slowly creeping up his arm. He curled his fingers until the tips touched the end of his wrist blade, and found the metal slick and damp.

'Oh my God, _Lucy_! Talk to me, tell us what happened...'

'Don't move her, I'm going to put pressure on the wound.'

'Should we put her in the recovery position?'

'She's already _in_ the recovery position, you idiot, she must have fallen like that.'

'What happened to her?'

'I ... I think she's been stabbed.'

'Stabbed? But who...?'

He let his head roll to one side and looked at Lucy. Her eyes were closed but one of her arms lay outstretched towards him, as though she saw his pain and wanted to comfort him.

' _Desmond_.'

'Fuck, I can't stop the bleeding.'

'Rebecca, are you listening to me? It was Desmond! Look at him, he's...'

'I know, Shaun, I see him. Make yourself useful and get that blade off him.'

Desmond felt a knee press into his chest and then his head was being lifted upwards, turned away from Lucy until he was staring into the face of Shaun Hastings. Shaun didn't even look angry yet. He looked bewildered.

'Was it really you? Why did you do it? _Why_?'

Desmond found himself unable to reply. His brain was still operating at half-speed, or perhaps it was double-speed, but it was all wrong and he couldn't talk because he couldn't even think right. He felt fingers scrabbling at his wrist and clumsily undoing the buckles of his wrist-blade, and as the weapon was lifted away from his arm Desmond felt a sense of relief. He heard a soft _thump-clack_ as the wrist-blade was tossed to one side, and then felt the press of Shaun's hand upon his forearm, pinning it to the puddle of blood that it lay in.

'How is she? Is it bad?'

His hand was too close to the Apple, close enough to feel its radiating power. Desmond twisted his fingers away from it in revulsion

'Rebecca, talk to me! Should I run back to the van and grab the first aid kit?'

'It won't do any good, Shaun. She's dead.'

 _Dead, dead, dead_ ... the temple echoed the words back mockingly.

'Dead? You mean she's stopped breathing? Can't you try CPR or...?'

'Wouldn't work. He must have hit a major artery or vital organ or something. She's bled out.' Rebecca's voice was dull with shock.

'But when did he have time to ... We were right there and then...'

'Shaun, _I don't know_.'

There followed a long silence which seem to stretch out, to expand and fill the air as Rebecca finally leaned back from where she had been crouched over Lucy's prone body, her corpse. Out of the corner of his eye, Desmond saw Rebecca raise a shaking hand to her mouth, and then balk as she realised that it was covered in Lucy's blood. They all were now; it had spread out in a wide puddle from where she lay and was dripping off the edge of the platform.

Desmond closed his eyes and wished to be anywhere but here.

'Open your eyes.' Shaun's voice was like the low rumble of distant thunder before a flash of lightning. He gripped the collar of Desmond's T-shirt and lifted him, shook him so that his head lolled forward and then smacked back onto the hard stone floor. 'Look at her, you bloody bastard, you _traitor_!'

Fuzziness vibrated through Desmond's brain from the point of impact on the back of his head. He waited and prayed for it to send him to sleep, for Shaun to punch him and send him the rest of the way into unconsciousness, but the pain dissipated and clarity made its unwelcome return.

'We need to get out of here,' Rebecca said quietly, wiping her forearm over her eyes and standing up shakily. On her way, she picked up the Apple of Eden and hastily slipped it into her bag, trying to limit the amount of contact between her skin and the heavy golden metal. 'We need to tell Bill what happened.'

'Yeah.' Shaun's voice was shaking. 'Yeah, you're right. _You_.' His fist was still tangled in Desmond's T-shirt and he stood up and dragged Desmond along with him. 'You can carry Lucy out of here.' Shaun's face usually went red when he was annoyed, but now it was very, very pale as he pulled Desmond in close and gritted out the next words. 'I'm taking your knife. If you make a wrong move, or if you drop her, I'll kill you myself.'

Desmond still didn't speak. He nodded, numbly, and staggered a little as Shaun released him. He looked briefly into Rebecca's eyes as he walked over to Lucy, and she flicked her gaze up to him, looking lost. Finally he knelt down by Lucy and dropped his hand to her face, stroking his thumb over her cheek. She looked so sad. He remembered the way that they had stared into each other's eyes, the moment at which his blade had roused her from the strange stasis that had gripped them all, and how she had stared at him with such sorrow. He swallowed hard and slipped one arm around her back, the other under her knees, and lifted her gently from the ground.

They walked in silence for most of the journey. Desmond concentrated hard on where he was putting his feet, fearful of jostling Lucy too much. She'd done the most of her bleeding as she lay on the raised platform, but his hoodie and shirt were soaked through to the skin before they even made it out of the temple. As they reached the Santa Maria Aracoeli, Rebecca slowed her pace and fell back to walk alongside Desmond.

'What happened?' she asked quietly, her voice shaking a little.

'I touched the Apple,' Desmond replied, speaking automatically. 'I couldn't move. Then I heard Juno talking to me, and she said ... it didn't make much sense, but I think she was saying that Lucy needed to die. Then she pushed me, she made me walk, she made me...' His voice trailed away; he couldn't finish.

Rebecca closed her eyes and nodded. 'I figured it must have been something like that. Are you OK?'

Before Desmond had a chance to laugh at the question, he heard Shaun scoff bitterly behind him. 'Oh yes, let's all worry about the _murderer_ 's feelings. I hope you didn't graze your knuckles when you were stabbing Lucy to death, Desmond.'

Rebecca ignored him. 'Look, I believe you, Desmond. But the Assassin leaders aren't going to be happy about this. You're probably going to be in for a rough time when they find out.'

'Can't you turn your back for a couple of minutes?' Desmond asked, trying to speak low enough that Shaun wouldn't hear. 'Give me a chance to run?'

'That's not a good idea. If you really weren't in control when you killed her, you need to tell them that. If you try to run they'll assume that you're guilty. You'd be a fugitive, Desmond.'

'Actually, it's not a good idea because if you try to run I'll shoot you in the back myself,' Shaun added coldly.

Desmond stopped walking and waited as Rebecca pulled the doors of the church open. Lucy was heavy in his arms, the muscles in his shoulders starting to burn after the long walk, but he couldn't bring himself to look back down at her. He held her a little closer, even though it hurt. When the door was opened, he followed Rebecca out of the church.

* * *

**October 12th 2012**

Desmond had been in this room for two days now, the only interruptions to his day being piss-breaks and the food that was delivered through a slot in the door. They were still in Italy, in an Assassin compound similar to the one he had been raised in, somewhere out in the countryside. The major difference was that the Farm he had lived on had been fairly bustling and densely populated, but this place had only a handful of Assassins, all of whom looked tired and overworked. There was a training ground, but it didn't seem to be getting any kind of regular use, and upon his arrival Desmond had seen signs of disrepair and neglect. It occurred to him that the Assassins no longer seemed nearly as impressive as they had when he was a child, and he recalled the others talking about teams going missing with a kind of resigned gloom. What had happened to the Brotherhood since Desmond's childhood to weaken it this much?

When he'd first arrived at the compound they had sat him down in front of a tape recorder, and an unsmiling Assassin leader had instructed him to narrate what had happened in the temple, as accurately as he could manage. Once he'd finished speaking, the man hadn't said a word, had given no indication of whether or not he'd found the story believable, and hadn't answered Desmond's questions of what would happen to him. He'd whisked the tape recorder off the table and nodded at the two younger Assassins present as an indication that Desmond should be returned to his room. His cell.

There wasn't so much as a window in the place. Just four walls, a bed, and a lightbulb which would click off like clockwork at precisely 9pm. With no external point of interest upon which to focus his thoughts, Desmond passed the time by endlessly reliving those brief few moments inside Juno's temple. He unbuckled his watch and used the sharp metal edge of the prong to scratch the mysterious Goddess' words into the wall so that he would not forget them. He would stare at those words while the light remained and attempt to decipher them, to find some explanation for why he had ended up with Lucy's blood running down his wrist.

Desmond wondered if they had buried her yet. Would her body have been returned to her parents? Were her parents Assassins as well? He'd never thought to ask her.

By the time the third day had rolled around, Desmond's guilt had begun to turn to anger. It seemed as though the Assassins were deliberately leaving him hanging, refusing to give him any information about how much trouble he was in and what his punishment might be, refusing even to let him explain his actions further. Didn't they care about what he had to say? Didn't they want to hear more about Juno's message? Didn't they have a fucking deadline to meet - the ultimate deadline? Was Desmond the only one who remembered that the entire goddamn world was going to be burnt down to ashes in less than three months?

By his watch, it was early afternoon when the door opened again. Assuming it would be a novice arriving with food, he refused to look up and stayed sitting on the bed, gripping the edges of it tightly, glaring down at his feet.

A lone figure stepped into the room and waited there. In his peripheral vision, Desmond saw the figure fold its arms, and a single sideways glance told him who it was.

'Hello Desmond,' said William Miles.

'Dad,' Desmond greeted shortly. His blood was high from a morning spent silently seething. 'I guess you found me again, huh?'

'A shame that it took so long. Trust me, it wasn't for lack of searching."

Desmond smiled mirthlessly and stood up from the bed, turning to face his father. 'So, what's the verdict? Gallows? Electric chair? Or are you going to be kind and make it a lethal injection?'

'Oh stop playing the victim, Desmond!' Bill snapped impatiently. 'We can't exactly afford to kill you, even if we wanted to.'

'So you don't want to? I murdered Lucy, Dad.'

'That's not what you said in your statement.'

'You believe me?'

'I believe that _you_ believe it.'

'What the fuck is that supposed to mean?'

Bill's jaw tightened in anger. Many years ago, back when Desmond was still trapped on the Farm and beginning his rebellious teen phase, he had picked up swear-words by listening in to the older kids. The first time he had said the F-word to his dad's face he had received a sharp cuff round the ear for his trouble, had seen his cold and distant father lose control as a direct result of something that Desmond had done. It had felt glorious. After that, whenever Desmond had been in need of catharsis and in a daring enough mood, he would swear loudly and deliberately, sometimes merely in Bill's earshot and sometimes directly to his face. It hadn't always ended in a punch - though on one memorable occasion after Desmond had been pushed through his daily training despite being half-dead with exhaustion left over from a bout of the flu, he'd screamed in Bill's face that he was a worthless father and a cunt. Bill had backhanded him and accidentally triggered the mechanism on his wrist-blade at the same time, slicing a long vertical cut over Desmond's lips and leaving him scarred for life.

Desmond would never forget the way his father had looked at him as he stood there, eyes still bright and defiant, blood dripping down his chin and onto his shirt. It was a look of such shock and even regret. Whether he would have apologised or not, Desmond never found out. He'd fled the room and had just ... kept walking. Then running, when someone spotted him on the borders of the compound. He'd been running pretty much nonstop since then.

No blow came this time, though Bill folded his arms as though trying to control the temptation. 'Let's just say that it's not the first time we've seen something like this. About a decade ago, Abstergo sent a sleeper agent into our midst. He was very talented, very dedicated to the cause. Seemed almost too good to be true. As it turned out, he was.' Bill kept his eyes fixed on Desmond's face. 'He was invited to meet the Mentor of the Brotherhood, and murdered him cold blood, just as Abstergo had programmed him to.'

Desmond stared at his father, confused. 'Wait, you think ... It wasn't Abstergo that made me kill Lucy, Dad, it was Juno, she...'

'I know, she spoke to you. The thing is, Desmond, no one else saw her or heard anything. Right now we only have your word as evidence that she appeared, and I'm sure you'll understand when I tell you that you're not the most trusted person in the Brotherhood right now.'

'So you think I'm lying?'

'No, but I can't be one hundred percent sure that your version of events is ... accurate. I'm not calling you a liar, son, but we need to be cautious.'

'What do you mean, "cautious"?'

* * *

**October 13th 2012**

The doctor had told him that he shouldn't be able to feel the implant, not unless he was touching the skin over the top of it anyway. There was a tiny puncture in the skin over the back of his neck where it had been inserted, and by the end of the day Desmond had rubbed a red mark over it, feeling the slight, unnatural bulge where the small piece of electronics was buried beneath his skin.

The humourless surgeon had explained its function as he swabbed the area with anaesthetic. 'The implant can be triggered by the remote device from a distance of up to one hundred miles. It will trigger automatically if you go beyond the range of the remote device. It will trigger automatically if you attempt to remove it. It won't kill you, but you will experience an extremely painful shock and you will be temporarily paralysed for up to 24 hours. It also acts as a tag so that we can track you on GPS if you go missing.'

Desmond had sat there with gritted teeth as it was inserted. His father had told him that after this he would be set free from his cell, free to explore the compound at his leisure, and able to take part in missions once more. He would be free, in the way that a leashed and muzzled dog is free.

Released from the infirmary, he stood in the centre of the compound, looking around him. Two Assassins that he did not recognise were talking on the path outside, and the heads turned to stare at him as he passed. They backed away from him a little, whispering amongst themselves. Desmond clenched his fists and forced himself to ignore them and carry on walking, though every instinct in his body was firing at him to snap at them, to ask them to speak up so that he could hear them.

He heard the soft pad of someone running up behind him in the grass and turned his head just in time to see Rebecca arrive at his side. He slowed his pace a little.

'Hey, Desmond,' she said tentatively. 'You doing OK?'

'Oh, just fine, I love getting bits of metal shoved into my body. I take it you're here to supervise me?'

Rebecca didn't even flinch. 'Yeah, I've been given first watch. Necessary precaution, Bill called it.'

'And do you think it is? Necessary, I mean.'

'I think that your Dad doesn't want you running off again and he's using Lucy's death as an excuse to do what he couldn't when you were a kid.' To Desmond's surprise, Rebecca sounded genuinely tense. He looked sidelong at her.

'You don't agree with him, then?'

'No, I don't. The world is going to end in a couple of months if we don't stop it, and he decides the best course of action is to enslave you to the cause? It worries me, Desmond. The Assassins are supposed to stand for freedom. That was the reason I agreed to join them in the first place, but look at what they've done to you. Sometimes I think ... Assassins, Templars - it seems like when the heat gets turned up we all boil down to the same thing.'

Desmond gazed at Rebecca's irritated expression and felt some of the rage inside him begin to dissipate. Maybe he wasn't completely alone after all. As he watched, she drew something out of her pocket that looked like a keychain and held it out to him. He stopped walking and turned his palm upwards.

'What's that?' he asked as the item was dropped into his hand.

'It's the remote for your implant. My one, anyway. Your father has one as well, and so does Shaun.'

Desmond shuddered at this revelation. Shaun had been given control of his implant? Jesus, the guy would probably trigger it if Desmond refused to pass him the salt at dinner.

'Why are you giving this to me?'

'Because the idea of being able to drop you to the ground with the push of a button, like you're some kind of malfunctioning robot, makes me sick to my stomach. I don't want it, Desmond. I even tried to find a way to hack the signal, to convert the thing into an off-switch. Nothing worked, nothing that wouldn't risk setting it off anyway.'

Desmond clenched his jaw and turned the remote over in his hand, thumbing the button on top. He swallowed hard before saying, 'Rebecca, you should take this back.'

'But...'

'If my father finds out that I have it, you'll get in huge trouble. He'll probably use it as an excuse to put me under even stricter control.' He handed the remote back to her, and she took it reluctantly. 'Look, I like this even less than you do, but we need to stop the solar flares and we don't have much time left to figure out how to do it. If we're still around at Christmas then I'll be more than happy to dedicate some time to getting this thing out of me.'

Rebecca shook her head sadly. 'This is such _bullshit_.'

'Tell me about it.'

* * *

'Try again.'

'I've tried five times already, it's not working!'

'God _damn_ it, Desmond...'

'Bill, he's right. It must be a problem with the Animus, it's just not interacting with his brain any more.'

'Well that is strange. Perhaps it has a minimum IQ requirement.'

'Not helping, Shaun.'

Desmond sat up in the Animus, rubbing his forehead, his face scrunched up in pain. They had been here in the compound's Animus room for over twenty minutes as he unsuccessfully attempted to open up Ezio's memories once more. Each time he had made it as far as the loading screen before a horrible screeching static filled his mind and burst out of the speakers on the monitor, and his vision would feel with blood-red noise. The Animus would overheat and take several minutes to reboot.

'Try it again,' Bill repeated, rubbing a hand over the back of his head as he paced back and forth.

'No!' Desmond retorted angrily, standing up. 'My head is killing me and this is pointless.'

Bill turned to glare at his son. 'We are not giving up just because you are too lazy to try properly!'

'I have been _fucking_ trying and it's not _fucking_ working. What are you going to do, zap me until my brain starts working properly?'

'Don't tempt me.'

'Stop it, both of you!' Rebecca snapped, loud enough that they both turned their heads. 'This is getting us nowhere. Bill, I'm telling you, there's nothing that Desmond can do. The Animus is just ... rejecting his mind.'

Bill muttered something inaudible and walked away from his son, perching on the edge of a desk and losing himself in his own thoughts. Desmond turned away from him in disgust and spoke to Rebecca.

'You don't necessarily need me to use it, right? You just need Ezio's memories, so any one of his descendants would do.' He glanced over pointedly at his father.

Rebecca pulled a face. 'Technically, yes, but it's a time issue. If we put Bill in the Animus then he'd need to go through every single memory that you've already unlocked again, just to get caught up. It could take weeks, and we don't have all that many weeks to spare. What we really need is someone else who's already...' Her voice trailed away as she continued the rest of the thought inside her own head, eyes widening a little as she looked over at the Animus.

Bill caught her expression and seemed to pick up on the same idea, his expression clearing a little. 'Now, there's a thought.'

'Right?' Rebecca said eagerly. 'I mean, it'd be a bit of a risk, but surely it's been long enough now that they'll have relaxed their security.'

'I could organise a team and send them for him. He's not even far away from here. If we go to work right away then we could have him back here by tomorrow evening.'

'Oh yes,' Shaun breathed, looking as though he had finally caught on to what they were saying. 'Of course. That could work, though it's not without its problems...'

Desmond's temper finally snapped and he raised his hands to try and shut them all up. 'Woah, would anyone like to fill me in on what the hell you're talking about?'

Shaun rolled his eyes and Bill looked irritated at the interruption, but Rebecca turned to answer him. 'Subject Sixteen,' she said simply.

'Subject Sixteen? The crazy puzzle guy from the Animus?'

'That's the one. He relived Ezio's memories as well, remember? It seems like he actually got a lot further along Ezio's timeline than you did, and you said that in that executable file you found he spoke to you, dropped a bunch of hints about how to go about stopping the solar flares. He might already know what we need to do.'

Desmond stared at her for a few moments before speaking again. 'Uh, that's great Rebecca. I just have one question. How the hell are we supposed to get a dead guy to use the Animus again?'

In the silence that followed, it was Bill who spoke first, softly. 'Subject Sixteen isn't dead.'

The statement threw Desmond completely. It was like being told that Santa was real. Or Satan, perhaps. 'What are you talking about? I saw his blood...'

'He had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide,' Bill continued. 'He survived - barely. After that, Vidic couldn't get him to use the Animus any more, no matter how hard he tried to coerce him. Subject Sixteen just ... shut down.'

'And you know this because...?'

'Lucy told us,' Shaun replied, sounding suddenly very weary.

Desmond closed his eyes for a moment, trying to stay focused and not wander off into his memories again. 'So where is he now? Do we have to break him out of Abstergo.'

'Thankfully, no.' Rebecca turned to her computer and began typing furiously. A quick look at her screen told Desmond that she was simultaneously booting up some kind of hacking program and searching through satellite map images. 'Once they realised that he was no longer functional, Abstergo shipped him off to a mental instution just outside Rome.'

'When was this?'

'Not too long ago. August, I think.'

' _August_? So he's been out of Abstergo for a couple of months, at least, and you haven't tried to rescue him?'

The other three people in the room exchanged hesitant, awkward glances. Not one of them seemed particularly eager to look Desmond in the eye.

'We've been a little bit preoccupied, Desmond,' Shaun said at last, with deliberate sardonicism. 'Besides, there's not much left to rescue. From what Lucy told us, it sounded like a mental institution was the best place for him.'

'So you just ... abandoned him?' Desmond was horrified at the thought. It wasn't like he knew Subject Sixteen all that well - hell, he didn't even know his real name - but he had heard how terrified and lost he had been when he'd recorded those messages in the Animus. The idea that this person was still alive and sitting wrapped in a straitjacket, at the mercy of Abstergo and locked away in an asylum with his Assassin brethren so close by, was extremely unsettling.

Bill seemed to sense his indignation, and spoke as gently as he was capable of. 'Shaun is right. As much as I hate to admit it, Abstergo are probably administering better care for him than we would have the resources for. And any of our secrets he might have had will already have been extracted by the Templars.'

'But now you've decided that you can use him again, you're going to get off your asses and break him out,' Desmond accused in a brittle voice.

'Yes,' Bill replied candidly, finally meeting his son's eye. 'Since you apparently can't use the Animus any more, we need his memories of Ezio.'

'Abstergo still have the place under watch,' Rebecca added, frowning at her computer screen. 'Not too strict, but we'll need to send in the best team we have available right now.' She looked up at Bill with a small grin.

Desmond looked from Rebecca to his father, then back again, before asking, 'Well, which is the best team we have?'

Shaun cleared his throat. Desmond let the silence sink in for a few more seconds.

'Oh, you've got to be _kidding_ me.'


	2. Chapter 2

It was that time of year when the sun had started rising later than Daniel did. It was still dark when he went for his morning run, circumnavigating Fairmount Park, his breath just visible in air that was becoming prematurely frosty. If he made good time - and he usually did - he'd be back at his apartment by around 8 and would lift weights before his muscles had time to cool down. Then he would stand beneath the powerful shower and let the near-scalding water pound the sweat from his skin, and finally he would get dressed and head downstairs again to check his post.

Discipline. It had become Daniel's new drug of choice years ago, something to replace the ecstasy and cocaine and heroin and crystal meth and LSD and PCP and mescaline and ketamine and chlorpromazine that he had stuffed into his body when he was younger. Looking back, Daniel was sometimes amazed that he'd ever made it out of his teens.

Not that it mattered how hard he worked out. His body might be in the best shape it could possibly be, but Daniel knew that somewhere someone must have stamped the words "unfit for active duty" on his record, probably around the same time that he'd completely fucked up a mission due to an ill-timed bout of the Bleeding Effect. Up until that mission - earlier this year - he'd been leading some of the most risky and exciting operations that Abstergo had. Nowadays it seemed that all they wanted him to do was talk.

'You're more useful to us on a podium than you are in the field,' was how Alan Rikkin had phrased it when Daniel had come to him, wearing a sullen expression, and asking as respectfully as he could manage why he had done nothing but give speeches to wide-eyed new recruits for months on end. 'Brawn isn't everything, Daniel. We need you as a symbol more than we need you as a soldier.'

'Why can't I be both?'

He'd never been given a decent answer, but he hadn't really needed one. Daniel had hoped - once, a long time ago - that with age the Bleeding Effect would stop affecting him, but the attacks remained frequent and powerful. Only last week, one of his neighbours had reported Daniel to the super after he stayed up until the early hours of the morning knocking over furniture and screaming obscenities in Russian. Since Abstergo owned the building the complaint had come to nothing, but would undoubtedly have been reported back to HQ as further evidence of Daniel's unreliability.

His mood blackened by the memory of the incident, Daniel jogged down the stairs to his mailbox and retrieved a small handful of envelopes, which he opened on the way back up. No bills, of course. Abstergo took care of all that. There was a postcard from Dr. Sung, currently spending a week visiting her family in Detroit, which included a pointed comment about how she hoped he was "treating himself well". Junk mail, junk mail, a DVD of _Battleship Potemkin_ that he had ordered, a takeout menu ... and, on the bottom of the stack, a long white envelope with the Abstergo symbol neatly marked in the top right corner.

Daniel reached this last piece of mail when he was on his doorstep. He paused before opening it to let himself into the apartment, knowing that it was unwise to read official correspondence in public.

Inside was about 2000 euros in cash, and a first class plane ticket from Philadelphia to Rome, scheduled to leave in five hours.

Daniel's cell phone rang before he even had a chance to finish counting out the money. He flipped it open on the way out of his pocket and tilted his head to pin it between his left ear and his shoulder.

'Warren. You spying on me?'

'I just know your routine, Daniel.'

'I take it this little parcel is from you. Company holiday?'

'Not exactly.'

'Let me guess. You need me to make a speech.'

'You guess incorrectly, Daniel. Actually, I have a task for you.'

Daniel paused for a moment, taking note of the emphasis that Vidic had put on the words. There was an unspoken code in their exchanges where anything mundane or safe was described as a "job" and anything dangerous or interesting was always referred to as a "task". Daniel reached up to the phone and held it to his ear properly. 'I'm listening.'

'Glad to hear it,' Vidic replied sarcastically. Technically they were equals now - both being Masters in the Order - but Vidic had never quite got past his habit of treating Daniel like a wayward child. 'Ordinarily we'd have our agents in Rome take care of this, but the operation requires a degree of discretion, and we'd prefer to send in someone with your array of skills.'

'Much as I love to hear you beat around the bush, Warren, I've got a plane to catch in a few hours and I haven't had a chance to pack. Could we move this along?'

Warren gave a barely-audible huff of indignation before speaking again. 'You recall that we organised Desmond Miles' removal from the Rome facility a few weeks ago? Lucy Stillman shammed an escape, in the hope that he would be more cooperative among the Assassins.'

Daniel frowned in annoyance at the memory. 'Yeah, I remember. You know, I put a lot of work into finding that kid and snatching him, Warren. If I'd known you were just planning to release him again after about a week, I might not have gone to so much trouble.' He hadn't been present for the actual abduction, which had been simple enough that the regular guards could take care of it, but tracking Miles down had been a bitch.

'Apparently it wasn't the right move,' Warren replied, a rare concession. 'Stillman is dead.'

'Damn,' Daniel breathed. 'They caught her out?'

'I have no idea. What I do know is that she's being shipped back to her parents with a stab wound from an Assassin blade. This leaves us with the problem of how to recapture Desmond Miles.'

Daniel gave a short, derisive laugh. 'And you've decided that I'm the man for the job? Again? Is every mission I go on going to involve running around after Desmond Miles with a net like a cartoon dogcatcher?'

'You won't need to run around after him this time. He's going to run right towards you. Our IT specialists detected a local hack into our surveillance on L'Abate Psychiatric Hospital. It seems as though Miles and his team are planning an attempt to recover Clay Kaczmarek from the facility. I have no idea what they want with him, but I want you to intercept and bring Kaczmarek and Miles back to our headquarters in Rome. I need you to do it discreetly, and I'd prefer for the rest of the team to not realise they're missing until it's too late.'

Daniel turned this over in his head, piecing together a plan even as he walked towards his bedroom to pack everything he would need. 'I'll take care of it.'

* * *

**October 14th 2012**

Bill was driving and Rebecca navigating, which left Shaun and Desmond alone in the back of the van. Once they'd climbed inside, Shaun had immediately opened up his laptop and set about dedicating himself wholly to the task of pretending that Desmond didn't exist.

Desmond looked over at him sadly. Admittedly Shaun had never exactly been friendly towards him, but his insults and impatience had never been particularly vitriolic before now. Shaun had a naturally acerbic attitude and it was part of something that, for lack of a better term, might be called his charm. All that had changed now. He had avoided properly engaging with Desmond since the temple, and whenever they had spoken it had been made very clear that Shaun's insults and dismissals were now coming from a much darker, angrier place.

'What kind of security will they have once we get in there?' Desmond asked, more as an excuse to break the silence than out of curiosity.

'Provided the Templars haven't seen us coming, you shouldn't encounter too much,' Shaun replied coldly. 'Most of the security is designed to prevent people from breaking out. People aren't exactly clamouring to get _inside_ the mental institution.'

Desmond picked up on the pronoun that Shaun had used. 'I'm going in alone?'

Shaun finally lifted his gaze from his laptop and peered at Desmond in the near-darkness. 'Well, you are the most _spry_ team member out of all of us. Besides, one man is a lot less noticeable than four people.' He paused for a moment. 'If you're thinking of using this as an opportunity to abandon us, Desmond, I'd like to remind you of what I said in the temple.'

'You'd shoot me in the back, Shaun?'

By way of response, Shaun reached into his pocket and pulled out a device identical to the one that Rebecca had offered Desmond yesterday. 'I wouldn't use a gun, and I wouldn't kill you, but believe me when I say that I am eagerly waiting for any opportunity to use this thing.'

'Shaun, I didn't mean to kill Lucy, it wasn't me, you have to believe me...'

'Oh, am I hurting your feelings?' Shaun hissed back viciously. 'In case you hadn't realised this yet, Desmond, your little crisis of responsibility isn't going to make any difference to Lucy. She's dead and it was your blade that ended up in her gut, so you'll forgive me if I don't drop my guard around you. I've seen where that leads.'

Desmond realised that it was pointless to argue this any further. Shame and anger were bubbling hot in his stomach and as Shaun looked back down at his laptop screen, Desmond felt a sudden urge to snatch the damn thing up and break it over his knee. Then he saw Shaun's face lit up by the soft, blue glow of the screen and realised that he didn't look cool, or arrogant, or dismissive. He didn't even seem to be doing any work. He was taking slow, deep breaths in an audible effort to calm himself and he was flexing his shaking fingers over the keyboard, his eyes bright.

Feeling strangely voyeuristic, Desmond forced himself to look away from Shaun. They spent the rest of the journey in silence.

The sun was setting as they parked up in a side road next to the hospital. There was a high fence and thick trees around it, probably to prevent passers-by from ogling the patients, or vice versa. Desmond could see the hospital rising up above the treeline. He was no expert in architecture, aside from what he had picked up from Shaun's descriptions in the Animus database, but he guessed that this place would have been built some time in the seventies. It was red-brick: modern in its design and ugly in its modernity.

They spilled out of the van and Bill moved to Desmond's side. ' You'll have to go over the fence; they make visitors sign in at the gate. It's still visiting hours so provided you don't draw too much attention to yourself, you should be able to blend in. From what I understand about the layout of the wards, you'll find Sixteen somewhere on the second floor. His door may or may not be unlocked, depending on how well he's behaved himself while he's been in there. If it is locked, find an orderly...'

'Dad, it's not my first time,' Desmond interrupted, knowing that it was irrational to turn down advice but frankly sick of being told what to do.

'Alright, hotshot,' Rebecca said, possibly just to head off an argument. 'If you feel up to the challenge, it would be really great if you could find Sixteen's psych notes while you're in there. If we're going to get him sane again then we'll need any help we can get.'

'It would _help_ if I knew his name.'

'Oh, right, of course. It's Kaczmarek. Clay Kaczmarek.'

Desmond stared at her blankly for a moment. 'I'm ... going to need you to write that down for me.'

Scaling the fence was the easy part. The paint on the vertical metal railings was flaking and their surface was rough enough that Desmond was able to grip them easily and haul himself up. There was a risky moment when he reached the top and nearly impaled himself on a spike in a way that would have permanently prevented him from leaving any descendants, but he grabbed an overhead branch and pulled himself back up just in time. He huffed out a breath and shook his head at the close call before dropping down the other side of the fence into the cover of the shrubbery.

Desmond crept towards the lawn with his heels slightly stinging from the landing and a collection of small leaves in his hair. Staying as low as possible, he glanced out over the modest garden area, first looking to the left and towards the side door where he would make his entrance, then to his right where...

... Where a slightly overweight, heavily stubbled man in pyjamas was staring at him, temporarily distracted from the child's doll that he had been playing with, with very wide eyes and an open mouth, as though Desmond was an alien who had just landed in his spaceship.

 _Crap_. Very slowly, Desmond raised a finger to his mouth in a shushing gesture. He was about to back away from the patient when a thought struck him and he turned back.

'Clay?' he asked hopefully.

The patient shook his head slowly, eyes still popping.

'Worth a shot,' Desmond muttered. Of course it wouldn't be that easy.

He made his way over the grass, walking upright and trying to look as though he belonged. He spotted a few more patients out and enjoying the last of the day's sunshine, but none of them seemed to pay much attention to him. The side door was down a small set of steps and led into a basement that, according to the blueprints, comprised the laundry room and staff locker rooms. To Desmond's surprise it was already slightly ajar, but he didn't overthink this. Probably just a cleaner had slipped out for a smoke and forgotten to shut the door behind them.

Once inside he took a moment to collect himself and go over the plan again. Copies of the patient files would be kept in the office on the ground floor, and Desmond planned to grab Sixteen's notes while he was here. Failing to do so would only give the others yet another excuse to complain about how useless he was. Then he had to get up to the second floor and either convince Sixteen to walk out by himself, throw him out of a window and jump down after him, or carry him all the way back down and out of the building again.

'Simple,' he muttered to himself sarcastically, beginning his journey down the hallway.

'You lost, kid?'

Desmond started at the voice, surprised for the second time in five minutes by someone he hadn't even noticed until he was right next to them. An orderly in blue scrubs was leaning in the doorway of the staff locker room, arms folded and eyebrows raised.

Frantically reaching for a decent lie, Desmond replied, 'Yeah, uh, I was visiting my mom and I must have...'

The orderly shook his head and chuckled. 'Relax, Desmond.'

'Who the hell are-?'

'Don't worry, I'm on your side,' the orderly interrupted, raising a hand placatingly. He then turned the hand over and Desmond saw a design tattooed on the inside of his forearm. It had been slightly embellished, but recognisable within it was the symbol of the Assassin Brotherhood.

Desmond relaxed fractionally, though he was no less confused. 'My dad didn't say anything about backup.'

'He didn't?' the orderly frowned. 'Damn, message must not have gone through. Your father filed a report to the other Master Assassins about what you guys were planning, and Paul Bellamy sent me here to provide support. Name's Daniel.' He rotated his arm again, this time in an obvious request for a handshake, and Desmond accepted reluctantly. Daniel was a couple of inches taller than he, powerfully built, and had to be at least a decade older judging by the lines in his complexion. His hair hadn't been affected by his age, however, and was a healthy corn-coloured blonde cropped just long enough to make a drill sergeant scowl. He had narrow features and a slightly pointed chin that ended in a scruff of yellow goatee.

'Well, at least I'm not doing this on my own,' Desmond said with genuine relief, following Daniel into the locker room and deftly catching the spare set of scrubs that were thrown to him.

'I'm guessing Bill and the others are sitting outside in the van?' Daniel probed with a sly grin as Desmond stripped off his street clothes and began pulling on the scrubs.

'Apparently that's the easiest way of doing this.'

'Easiest for them, maybe. But two heads are better than one, and it might take both of us to subdue Sixteen and drag him out of here.'

'Subdue him?' Desmond repeated, stuffing his jeans and hoodie into a nearby locker. 'He's not catatonic, then?'

Daniel shook his head and picked up a brown folder from one of the benches, flipping it open. 'The head-shrinkers...' he said the term with a surprising amount of disdain. '... Have diagnosed him with hebephrenic schizophrenia. Delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech and thought patterns...'

'The Bleeding Effect?'

The other Assassin's eyes flicked up from the notes temporarily. 'You got it.'

'That's Sixteen's file,' Desmond realised. 'You found it already?'

'I got here about an hour ago,' Daniel confirmed, raising an eyebrow in a somewhat cocky gesture. 'Figured I'd get a head start while I waited for you. Took out their CCTV as well, which should make things easier for us.'

'Wow,' was all Desmond could think to say, feeling somewhat clumsy and novitiate as he followed Daniel out of the locker room and up the corridor towards a set of elevator doors. 'I guess you do this sort of thing a lot?'

Daniel smiled strangely. 'Not as much as I'd like.'

He pushed the call button for the elevator and, while they were waiting, walked a little way down the hall to where a wheelchair was neatly folded up against the wall. Rather than opening it up, Daniel simply lifted it with one hand and carried it back to the elevator just in time to catch the opening doors. Another good idea, one that Desmond himself might not have thought of until much later, if at all. He wondered why Daniel had not been assigned to Lucy's team in the first place, given how experienced he seemed to be.

'You armed?' Daniel asked as the doors slid closed and the grinding climb to the second floor began.

Desmond shook his head, and realised as he did so that he hadn't seen his wrist-blade since Shaun had confiscated it back at the temple. A small amount of resentment surged within him, for he had grown somewhat attached to it...

Then there was a sudden swooping sensation in his stomach as he recalled Lucy throwing it to him casually, just before they escaped the first hideout. If she'd known that she was handing him the very weapon that he would later use to take her life, perhaps she would have thought twice.

Whilst taking stock of the missing weight on his left arm, Desmond came to realise that there was something else missing as well. He reached up to his ear with alarm.

'Shit! I thought things were a bit too quiet.'

'What do you mean?'

'My headset is gone.' The small, lighter-sized device that was usually clipped over his ear to allow for two-way communication had vanished, and Desmond couldn't recall where he might have lost it.

'You weren't wearing one when I first saw you. Must have fallen off outside.'

'I guess.'

Desmond had hoped the second floor ward would be fairly deserted, but it was about time for the evening meal and the corridor was bustling with patients. He glanced at them discreetly as he passed, trying to get a feel for the extremity of the conditions which warranted a second floor stay. Quite a few of them stared shamelessly at he and Daniel as they passed, while others shuffled along, staring at the ground and mumbling into their hands. One woman with very tangled hair seemed to be speaking a language all of her own, while a very old man was taking an eternity to move due to his fierce concentration on stepping only in the dead centre of each floor tile. Desmond realised that he had no idea who he was supposed to be looking for.

'Let me take a look at his file,' he muttered to Daniel, reaching out a hand for it.

'Haven't spotted him yet,' the other Assassin assured him before handing it over.

Desmond flipped the cover open and found a picture of Subject Sixteen - Clay Kaczmarek - on the first page. It must have been taken after he arrived. He was facing the camera but his eyes were not looking into the lens but just left of it, as though distracted by something. He was unsmiling, light stubble covering his cheeks and chin and dark shadows under his eyes, standing out in a very pale complexion. Was that what the Bleeding Effect did to a person after they'd been in the Animus long enough? Blonde hair, about thirty years old ... Desmond memorised his face quickly before handing the file back to Daniel.

A doctor in a white coat walked past them and gave a fractional frown before shaking whatever passing suspicion he might have had away. In a place as big as this there must be a large body of staff and a reasonable turnover rate, and though they received a few odd looks as they traversed the second floor, no one stopped to question them.

'Here,' Daniel said at last, as they came to one of the few closed doors on the ward. There was a small square window set into it at about head height, and Desmond watched as Daniel peered through it and raised his eyebrows fractionally. He whistled through his teeth and set the wheelchair down. 'Nice decor,' he commented as he pushed his way into the room, Desmond following closely behind.

The meaning behind the words was obvious as soon as they stepped inside. Practically every inch of the walls, floor, and ceiling had been scribbled over with symbols, numbers, patterns, and words in a dozen different languages, all written in thick, black permanent marker ink if the collection of dried-up pens scattered over the floor was anything to go by. Desmond peered at it all, fascinated, but couldn't make sense of it beyond a few fragments of sentences. If there was a system here then he couldn't spot it.

'Desmond,' Daniel said, and Desmond realised that in the great mess of the room he had somehow managed to completely miss Subject Sixteen. In his white hospital clothes he was practically camouflaged where he lay on the sheets of his bed. He had a hand curled up and over his head with a greyish layer of residual ink apparently ingrained into his very skin, and he seemed to be sleeping. Desmond approached him cautiously and dropped to one knee by the bed, one arm hovering hesitantly over Sixteen's shoulder.

'Clay?' he ventured.

The man twisted in the bed and sat up so suddenly that Desmond barely saw the transition. One minute Sixteen was curled up with his face turned towards the wall, and the next he was sitted bolt upright, his feet planted firmly on the floor, holding Desmond's wrist in an iron grip and staring wildly into his face.

'It's OK, it's OK!" Desmond babbled hastily, fighting down the urge to strike the madman with his free hand. 'I'm an Assassin, I'm Bill Miles' son. Desmond. My name's Desmond Miles, I'm a friend.'

His wrist was starting to ache from the pressure and Sixteen's gaze was incredibly uncomfortable to look into, his red-rimmed blue eyes fierce and flickering suspiciously over Desmond's face. He opened his mouth and began to speak French very rapidly, before swearing, squeezing his eyes shut, and continuing in Italian.

'OK, so he's still nuts,' Desmond said in a faux-conversational tone, turning his head to look at Daniel, who had been watching the exchange from afar with a hard expression.

'We should knock him out and get him in the wheelchair.'

It might have been the smartest course of action, but the idea of breaking into this guy's room and beating him into unconsciousness didn't sit well with Desmond at all. 'Wait, give me a chance to talk him round.'

Subject Sixteen said: 'Cross.'

Desmond turned back to him in surprise. 'Well, that's more like it,' he said optimistically. 'That sounded like English, at least. Listen, Clay, we...'

'No no no,' Sixteen interrupted, shaking his head frantically but somehow keeping his eyes fixed on Desmond. 'You have to ... Cross, the cross...'

Like an unpleasant dream, Minerva's words returned, pulled to the forefront of Desmond's mind. 'The cross? "Guard against the cross"?' he quoted. 'What does that mean, Clay?'

Sixteen didn't reply, but Desmond realised that he wasn't the focus of Sixteen's attention any more. The man was no longer looking into his eyes, but rather seemed to be gazing over his shoulder, just like in the photograph Desmond had found in his file. Desmond was in the midst of wondering if the Bleeding Effect had kicked in again and Sixteen was staring at some kind of ancestral memory, when a whole group of puzzle pieces finally slotted together in his mind and he froze.

Subject Sixteen wasn't staring into space. He was staring at Daniel.

Desmond knew what "guard against the cross" meant. It didn't take a genius to figure out that it referred to the Templars.

Desmond had admired Daniel's smooth infiltration of the hospital, but it seemed somewhat strange that he had been able to break in unnoticed, steal confidential papers, take out the CCTV, and obtain two sets of scrubs in under an hour. Then there was the fact that they hadn't been stopped once on their way to Sixteen's room.

And really, how likely was it that another Assassin leader would be capable of sending aid, but incapable of letting Bill Miles know that he had done so? Desmond's father kept a charged cell phone on his person at all times.

There was also the mysterious case of Desmond's vanishing headset.

Whether it was because he had caught the expression of sudden clarity on Desmond's face, or simply because he had run out of his daily ration of coherence, Sixteen had stopped babbling and was staring desperately at Desmond, his face close enough that all the ravaging signs of madness were very visibly. Desmond swallowed hard and tried to speak in as normal a voice as he could muster.

'He's calmed down a bit. We might be able to walk him out of here.'

There was a stretch of silence in which none of them moved. Then Daniel said, 'In case you were wondering, Desmond, your acting hasn't improved at all in the last fifteen minutes.'

Desmond closed his eyes in resignation as he heard a rustle of clothing behind him, followed by a soft click. Lifting his lids once more he said to Sixteen, 'He's got a gun, hasn't he?'

Sixteen didn't reply, but for the first time something resembling a smile ghosted over his lips.

Raising his hands in a gesture of surrender, Desmond stood up slowly and turned to face Daniel, who had an automatic pistol aimed at the dead centre of Desmond's torso and adjusted his aim smoothly to keep the mark consistent as Desmond got to his feet.

'Can I just say one thing?' Desmond pleaded.

Daniel tilted his head to one side, as though considering the request. 'Make it quick.'

'I am a friggin' idiot.'

Daniel gave a short, loud bark of laughter, taken off guard by Desmond's words. 'No argument from me, but it's never too late to start playing things smart, Miles. Come with me quietly and I'll make sure they find a comfy Animus for you when we get back to Abstergo.'

'Yeah...' Desmond said, frantically trying to think of a way to stall the Templar. 'Thing is, there's more at stake here than you know.'

'Oh really? Tell you what, Desmond, why don't we hang out in this room for half an hour or so while you tell me all the things that are _really_ at stake? That should be long enough for your friends to figure out that something's gone wrong and come to your rescue.'

So stalling wasn't going to work. Time for Plan B. Drawing a deep, meditative breath, Desmond allowed every memory of combat that he had ever lifted from his days as Ezio rise to the top level of his brain. He pictured his next few moves in his brain: whipping an arm up to knock the gun aside, moving in close to deliver a suffocating punch to Daniel's solar plexus before driving the heel of his hand up into his opponent's nose to break it, dazing him enough to get the gun off him. The plan flashed through his mind in under a second and he moved with sudden and lethal precision.

At least, it should have been lethal. But somehow Daniel managed to reach each step in advance, so that the butt of the pistol was brought down with agonising impact on Desmond's shoulder, and the fist that whipped towards Daniel's solar plexus was caught before it ever arrived and squeezed in a punishing grip that Daniel used to pull Desmond towards him for a brutal headbutt.

Desmond staggered backwards with blood dripping out of his nose and bright lights popping in his vision. Daniel didn't follow him, but instead stood with the gun held loosely at his side, smiling dangerously. Hoping to catch him off guard, Desmond rushed in again and managed to get one good, solid punch in on Daniel's cheek before he was slapped down to the ground with terrifying ease.

Daniel followed him down and planted a hand firmly on Desmond's throat, the muscles in his arms flexing visibly as he held him down, applying just enough pressure to restrict the oxygen that Desmond desperately needed after the struggle.

'Done with the formalities?' Daniel taunted softly, a smile playing over his lips. 'Come on, kid, you've put up a fight, no one can say you didn't try, but it's time to start behaving yourself now.'

Desmond was never quite clear on exactly what happened next - his vision was just starting to go black when it happened - but suddenly there was a moment of sharp impact followed by a yell, and Daniel's hand was gone from his throat. In fact, Daniel was on the other side of the room, slumped against the wall, eyes closed and body limp.

Sitting up slowly, Desmond saw Subject Sixteen still on the bed, his wild eyes and heavy breathing the only indication that he had moved at all.

'Thanks,' was all Desmond could think to say. He got shakily to his feet and wiped his bloody nose on the sleeve of his scrubs.

Sixteen - Clay - screwed up his face as though in deep concentration before speaking. 'Desmond. Miles. You're Desmond Miles. You're welcome, Desmond, Miles, you're...' He shook his head in frustration. ' _Merde, je suis_ ... It's difficult. I'm trying to stay focused now, I didn't before, before I was trying to lose myself, unspool...'

'Maybe focus on getting out of here before you tackle the talking thing, huh?' Desmond suggested, taking pity on the guy. He may have just one-hit floored a combat-trained Templar who had effortlessly managed to pin Desmond to the ground, but it was hard to feel threatened by a man who was wearing PJ's in the middle of the day.

' _Verrai_ ... you'll need to guide me, I don't always know what's real.' Clay wrung his hands in discomfort and Desmond saw, with a great chill, two deep and ragged scars splitting the inside of each of his forearms, starting from the base of his hands and stretching halfway to his elbows. The one on his left arm looked slightly worse than the one on his right, though neither was particularly pretty, and the scar tissue was still red and fresh.

Wanting to look at anything other than Clay's arms for a moment, Desmond stooped to pick up the gun that Daniel had dropped and turned to look down at his would-be kidnapper.

'What should we do with him?'

Clay didn't reply.

'You think I should shoot him?'

A glance back at Clay showed him wearing an expression that very clearly said, _you're asking the crazy guy?_ Desmond cursed under his breath and turned his attention back to Daniel, but he already knew it was pointless.

'Fuck. Can't do it. Not while he's just lying there.' Resignedly, he tucked the pistol into the pocket of his scrubs.

'You probably won't get another opportunity like this,' Clay said quietly, his voice now eerily calm in comparison to the ramblings of before.

Desmond thought this over. 'You're right.' Then he grinned. 'You got a permanent marker I could borrow?'


	3. Chapter 3

**October 15th 2012**

The receptionist looked up at Daniel as he strode past and, though she recognised him well enough not to stop him and ask why he was here, she could not help but let her mouth fall open slightly at the sight of him. She wasn't the only one. Quite a few heads turned to stare as he passed, though most of the Abstergo employees were aware of who Daniel was and were wise enough to look away immediately.

He only broke his stride upon reaching Vidic's office, when a particularly brave guard stepped into his path and began, 'Sir...'

'He's expecting me.

The guard hesitated and then stood aside, and as Daniel passed him he added, 'Sorry, sir, but did you know that you have...'

'Yes,' Daniel said, without breaking his stride.

Warren was waiting inside, sitting at his desk and scowling at his computer screen. He looked up when Daniel entered and raised his eyebrows fractionally before standing and stalking over with the air of a particularly vigilant ticket inspector. After a deliberate pause he said, 'I understand that the mission wasn't a complete success.'

Daniel clenched his jaw. 'Warren, I...'

But Vidic was in no mood for explanations. 'I should have known it was a mistake bringing you into this,' he snapped. 'Our freshest recruits would probably have done a better job. I sent you to pick up a bartender and a mentally retarded wreck, and you come back empty-handed and looking like a complete fool. My God, Daniel, I knew you were a little out of practice but I had no idea...'

'I can fix this,' Daniel interrupted sharply, unable to listen to another second of Warren Vidic scolding him like a kid with a bad report card. 'I'll track down the safe house that they're using, I'll bring you the whole team, including Bill Miles.'

'So long as you don't run into a particularly troublesome Girl Scout on the way?' Warren sneered. 'Forget it. I'm sending you back to Philadelphia.'

'You can't fucking _send_ me anywhere, Warren,' Daniel growled, feeling the frayed rope that held back his anger starting to snap. He was better at controlling it now than he had been in his hot-headed youth, capable of storing up his rage and directing it along useful channels, but his blood was still high and his head hurting from yesterday's failure. It was taking every ounce of restraint he had to refrain from leaping onto Warren and pounding a fist into his face until he begged for mercy. 'If you don't want to give me any support then that's fine, but you can't stop me from going after Miles myself.'

'I'll go over your damn head if I have to. The last thing we need is Miles getting killed because of your childish need for revenge...'

'I don't hold grudges,' Daniel reminded him. 'You of all people should know that. I wouldn't be here right now if I did.'

Warren met his gaze and stilled for a moment, a small smile playing around his lips. Finally he said, 'Go home, Daniel. I gave you a chance to prove yourself, and you failed. There's really nothing more to say.'

* * *

Desmond clutched at his head and breathed through the pain as he sat up in the Animus. He and Rebecca were the only people in the Animus room this early in the morning, and he'd offered to try using the machine one more time.

He wasn't sure entirely why he had done so, but he suspected it had something to do with last night's ride back to the compound. After successfully escaping the hospital he'd reunited with the rest of the team - who were near frantic with worry after the long stretch of radio silence - and they'd had to half-carry Clay into the back of the van. Apparently unsettled by the change of surroundings, Clay had fallen apart once more, refusing or failing to respond to any questions and muttering to himself in a random mix of languages as his eyes flicked around wildly. He hadn't lashed out in violence, but he would occasionally twitch in an echo of movement that made Shaun visibly nervous, the historian edging further and further away so that by the time they reached the compound he was squashed up against the back of Rebecca's seat, his laptop propped in front of him like a shield.

Desmond hadn't moved away. He'd sat opposite Clay, observing the mad Assassin with a growing sense of fear and pity, putting a hand on Clay's shoulder to push him back into his seat on the occasions that he jumped to his feet with an expression of panic. A few times he'd tried to engage Clay in conversation, with little success. The next day he had woken up with a resolute certainty that he should try to save Clay from having to go back into the Animus.

'I don't suppose there's been any improvement?' he asked Rebecca, standing up shakily and rubbing his temple.

'None,' she told him. 'Don't worry about it, Desmond. Now that we have Clay back you should be able to get a bit of a break.'

'It just doesn't feel right,' he admitted. 'You saw what he's like now, Rebecca. It was the Animus that sent him off the deep end in the first place, and now my Dad's talking about putting him back into it.'

'Only as a last resort. If we can just get him talking again...'

Her train of thought was interrupted by the door opening and Bill entering, closely followed by Shaun and, between them, Clay. He had been given a fresh set of clothes but hadn't shaved since yesterday and looked no less stable. His gaze flew around the room quickly before finally coming to settle with unsettling intensity on Desmond's face. Desmond gave him a small smile of encouragement.

'Hi, Clay,' Rebecca said, standing up from her computer and walking over to him, placing a hand gently on his arm. 'Do you remember me?'

Clay didn't respond, but Desmond was intrigued by the question. 'You two know each other?'

Rebecca nodded. 'Sure. He originally joined the Assassins as a programmer, just like I did, so we worked together for a while before he was sent into Abstergo.'

'He was sent there?' Desmond echoed in confusion. He'd always assumed that Clay had been kidnapped just like he had.

It was Bill who answered. 'Yes. I sent him in. Once we found out about the Animus program and the fact that Abstergo were kidnapping the descendants of famous Assassins, I wanted to know what they were looking for. Clay went in and let himself get captured so that Lucy could report back on the memories they were making him explore.'

At the sound of Lucy's name Clay looked up at Bill sharply, suddenly focused in a way that he hadn't been since back at the mental hospital. Desmond watched him for a moment, but Clay didn't speak just yet.

'Why didn't you pull him out?' Desmond asked his father.

Bill sighed regretfully. 'We couldn't. The only way to get him out would have been to have Lucy break him out like she did with you, and that would have meant losing the best-placed source we had within Abstergo.'

At that, Clay laughed, a low, bitter chuckle. It wasn't happy or light-hearted. Frankly, it was an awful sound. Desmond waited for him to speak, but still no words were forthcoming.

'He knew the Templar as well,' he said. 'The one who was at the hospital.'

'Ah yes,' Bill said, his expression darkening at the memory. 'I want to know more about this man. Did he tell you his name?'

Before Desmond had a chance to answer, Clay said, 'Cross.'

Bill looked up sharply. 'Cross?'

'He said his name was Daniel,' Desmond added.

'Shit,' Rebecca exclaimed, looking over at Bill in alarm.

'Did you kill him?' Bill demanded harshly of Desmond. 'Is Cross dead?'

'Uh, no, Clay knocked him out...'

'He was unconscious and you just left him there?' Bill yelled disbelievingly. 'My God, Desmond, you had a chance to take out _Daniel Cross_ and you walked away?'

'Hey, I wasn't about to kill a dude who couldn't fight back,' Desmond snapped defensively. 'Besides, I didn't just leave him there.' He couldn't help but grin to himself as he recalled his parting gift to Daniel.

'What did you do?' Rebecca asked curiously.

'Well, Clay had all these pens lying around...'

Bill had closed his eyes before Desmond had even finished speaking, and through gritted teeth he said, 'Please tell me that you did not draw a picture of genitalia on Daniel Cross' face.'

'Of course not,' Desmond retorted, feigning offence at the accusation. 'I'm not that immature.'

'Thank God.'

'I just gave him a monocle.'

Rebecca muffled a snort of laughter.

'... And a moustache.' Bill was glaring at him. 'A Hitler moustache.' Desmond shuffled his feet. 'Look, in my defence, he hit me _really_ hard, I was just...'

'You are a complete fool,' Bill interrupted furiously. 'Daniel Cross is one of the greatest weapons that the Templars have. He practically single-handedly orchestrated the downfall of the Assassin Brotherhood in the twenty-first century. Some of our best men and women have attempted to take him down and he has slaughtered every last one of them. He's a Master Templar, Desmond, a member of the Inner Sanctum of the Templar Order, and not only did you let him live when you had the chance to kill him, you deliberately humiliated him.'

'Oh that is bloody fantastic. Just what we need, another angry Templar trying to track us down,' Shaun groaned.

'What difference does it make?' Desmond asked. 'The Templars were already looking for us...'

'Not Cross,' Rebecca explained gently. 'As far as we can tell, he wasn't directly involved until yesterday. The Templars have had him on the bench for a few months, but now that he's after you personally we could be in big trouble.'

'Do you remember I told you about a sleeper agent, the one who murdered the Assassin Mentor?' Bill said, rubbing a hand wearily over his beard.

'Oh,' Desmond said, figuring out where this was going.

'It happened twelve years ago. After that he ran back to Abstergo and we didn't hear from him for a while. We assumed that they'd killed him once he'd served his purpose, and we were preoccupied with trying to defend ourselves against a massive Templar assault.'

'I think I remember this,' Desmond said, frowning. 'You were away from home a lot, and everyone started acting kind of scared...'

'With good reason. When the Mentor fell and there was no one to replace him, everything changed. Since then we've been losing Assassins by the hundreds. We have maybe a tenth of the numbers and power than we used to have, and Cross played a big part in all of this. He re-emerged a few years later and began leading Templar raids, massacres...' Bill shook his head at the memories. 'I've seen him work, Desmond, and he has no mercy, no conscience.'

'And now you've got his attention,' Shaun added darkly.

'Hey, I wasn't the one who got caught hacking into Abstergo's security,' Desmond said, irritated now. 'I broke into that damn hospital all alone while you jackasses waited outside, and I managed to get out of there with Clay and the file. Now you're getting pissed at me just because I refused to kill a guy while he was passed out on the floor?'

'You did a good job,' Rebecca reassured him, before either of the others had a chance to speak.

'Yeah,' Desmond said, feeling a little embarrassed now. 'Well, I wouldn't have got out of there at all if it wasn't for Clay.'

A silence fell over the room as they all turned to look at their latest 'recruit'. Clay had been holding onto his elbows and silently staring at all of them, but when the attention was turned on him he began squirming uncomfortably again and muttering to himself.

'Hey,' Desmond said, walking over to him cautiously. 'I know it's difficult, but can you try to focus for me, Clay?'

Clay broke off his muttered conversation and looked Desmond in the eye. 'It's ... hard,' he admitted. 'You have ... I can't ... it's like I'm in ten different places at once right now, there are ghosts, fucking ghosts, everywhere. I see them all the time now, they don't go away, and they're so loud...'

'Were you on medication, back at the hospital?' Desmond asked.

'They gave me blue pills, in a paper cup, I ... _stai zitto_! Anti-psychotics, I think. They helped, sometimes, but not at night, the dreams, Desmond ... and they didn't understand, they wouldn't listen when I told them about the Animus ... they thought I was crazy.'

'We can get medication for you,' Shaun said, his voice uncharacteristically kind. Desmond had half-expected the historian to start mocking Clay, but he looked genuinely sympathetic, even sad.

'No time, I need...' Clay lifted a hand to his head and dug his fingers viciously into his scalp, grimacing. 'There are too many fucking people in here, in my head, in this room, I can't _concentrate_.'

'Alright,' Bill said authoritatively, standing up from where he had been perched on the edge of a desk watching the exchange. 'The rest of you, take a break. Clay, I'm going to ask you some questions, just you and me...'

'No,' Clay interrupted, and there was something dark in his voice as he glared at Bill with undisguised anger, seeming certain for the first time since Desmond had met him. 'Not you. Let me talk to Desmond. Alone.'

The other three turned to look at Desmond in surprise, and he couldn't help but feel a thrill of smugness. Raising his eyebrows at his father he said, 'You heard the man. Run along now.'

Bill paid no attention to him. He was looking back at Clay with a troubled, hesitant expression. 'Clay, I understand that...'

'No,' Clay said again. 'You don't understand anything, but he...' He nodded at Desmond. 'He might.'

The others vacated the room reluctantly, throwing a few concerned glances backwards. Clay kept his eyes closed as they left, breathing slow and deep, his eyelids twitching occasionally, and Desmond got the very distinct impression that he was fighting some kind of hard internal battle. While he waited for Clay to speak, Desmond went over in his mind all the clues that he could remember finding inside the Animus: the memory of Adam and Eve fleeing the tyranny of Those Who Came Before, the implication of dozens or great historical figures being involved in the Templar-Assassin struggle, and the occasional sad insights into Clay's own life inside Abstergo. He had no idea where to begin with his questioning. Should he leap in immediately with a question about Juno and the solar flares? That was the most pressing issue, surely.

As he pondered this Clay finally opened his eyes to look, not at Desmond, but at the Animus. 'You've been using her,' he said, the unsettling calm in his voice again.

'Yeah,' Desmond confirmed. 'I found the puzzles you left behind.'

'I knew you would. You might not know me, Desmond, but I knew that you were coming. You might be the ... chosen one, the special one, but Juno spoke to me too.' The last words were spoken almost petulantly. 'Do you know what she told me?'

Desmond shook his head, mute.

'She told me ... it was my destiny. To help you to succeed. That's my job - my role in all this: to be a rung on your stepladder to greatness.'

'Hey, I didn't ask for this!'

'Nor would you, if you knew what she meant by "greatness".'

Desmond felt suddenly chilled by the way in which Clay was looking at him: not with jealousy, but with an almost pitying expression. The man didn't explain his words further, but instead pulled a pained face and raised his hands to cover his eyes temporarily.

'Are you OK?' Desmond asked.

'It's difficult to stay here,' Clay admitted. 'Concentrating on you, it's like trying to hold up a conversation with three other people screaming in my ears. I'm not alone in my head now, not really, not any more. I don't know if I ever will be ... _ferme ta gueule, wychodzą_!' He hissed the last words under his breath, shaking his head as though he were under attack by angry bees.

Sensing that Clay was verging on losing himself altogether, Desmond stepped forward and laid on his shoulder, shaking him a little. 'Do you remember what Juno said?' he asked urgently. 'Do you know how we're supposed to stop the solar flares?'

Clay looked at him, wide-eyed, and countered with his own question. 'Where is Lucy, Desmond?'

* * *

Desmond wasn't happy about this. He got the sense that none of them were, but after hearing what had happened to Lucy, Clay had insisted that there was "something you all need to hear". He lay back in the Animus now, and as he closed his eyes he looked more peaceful than Desmond had ever seen him before, a contented smile spreading over his face as he closed his eyes and dipped his mind into the machine.

When the memory began to play on the monitors, it took Desmond a moment to realise that Clay wasn't inside his ancestor's genetic memory, but rather was using the Animus to project his own memories. There were no images to accompany the sound, save for a faint flickering of blue and grey on the screen, but the voice was clear and distinct: Warren Vidic.

It wasn't clear at first what they were listening to. Vidic began speaking about Desmond, and about Eye Abstergo, so the memory appeared to be a recent one. It was interesting, but there was nothing particularly groundbreaking about it.

When it happened - when they first realised that Warren was talking to Lucy, instructing her to break Desmond out of Abstergo when the time was right, orchestrating a plan for her to steal the Apple - a kind of numb silence fell over the room. They each knew that nothing in the Animus could be falsified, that this was no magic trick on Clay's part. Desmond wondered if he should be feeling some kind of vindication or relief that his actions, however involuntary, must have saved them all. Instead he just felt sick. The situation had been far easier to bear when he had been the villain and Lucy the victim.

Then, at the end of it all, when all of them were wondering _why_ , there came this: "Perhaps you might ask the Assassins why they left you alone for so many years."

The memory ended there and Clay returned to the loading screen of the Animus before shutting the machine down and opening his eyes. He sat up in the chair and waited silently, lost in his own thoughts.

Bill was the first to speak. 'Well. That explains why Juno wanted her dead.'

Desmond didn't respond to that, though he knew that it was about as close to an apology as he was ever going to get. He was running over the escape in his head. That blood on Lucy's shirt ... had she splashed that on to make the whole thing more convincing? God, why hadn't he realised how strange it was that they'd met so little resistance? Why was he so easily taken in by these people, by Lucy and Daniel? He wondered if the two of them had ever worked together, practiced the art of deception together, perhaps even been more than coworkers. He wondered whether anything Lucy said had been honest. He wondered whether she had really liked him at all, or had just been grooming him to get more information.

He glanced over at Shaun, who had his head in his hands and his face hidden. He looked at Rebecca, who simply looked deeply saddened. 'I guess this changes things,' she said at last.

'No,' Desmond said. 'It doesn't.'

Shaun finally looked up at that, surprise etched into the misery on his face.

Bill shook his head. 'Desmond, it does. You should at least take comfort in this...'

'Why?' Desmond demanded. 'Am I supposed to be glad Lucy is dead now? Am I supposed to feel good about killing her?'

'Desmond, I liked Lucy as well, but if she was a traitor...'

'Was she, though?' Desmond got to his feet and walked over to his father confrontationally. 'Sounded to me like she was pretty loyal. Just not to you.'

'Lucy was an Assassin,' Bill insisted, folding his arms. 'She was born into the Brotherhood, raised among us, taught our ways...'

'So you didn't give her a choice, either?'

'She had a choice, Desmond, and she made the wrong one!'

'You pushed her away! You pushed her away like you pushed me away! So she's a traitor and I'm a deserter, is that how it works?'

'Apparently, yes,' Bill snapped. 'Apparently that is how the world works. Most people will always choose personal gain and power over doing the right thing. Why do you think the Templars are so much stronger than us, Desmond? It's because of people like you and Lucy, people who can't see past their own selfishness!'

'Wanting to live my own life makes me selfish?'

'I'm sorry, Desmond, am I infringing upon your right to live in a shitty apartment and work a pointless job while the rest of the world goes to hell?'

'This might be hard for you to believe, Dad, but I liked my shitty apartment and my pointless job. I was happy.'

'Oh, well as long as _you're_ happy,' Bill sneered. 'God forbid anything get in the way of your happiness.'

'Guys, stop!' Rebecca said, stepping in between them and pushing a hand into each of their chests as though worried that they were about to start taking swings at each other. She wasn't exactly being paranoid.

'Desmond's right,' said Shaun.

That stopped everyone in their tracks.

Desmond turned to stare at Shaun as though expecting to see a ventriloquist ducked down behind him. Lucy was a Templar and Shaun was agreeing with him? Had the entire world turned upside-down?

'I just mean ... what does it matter now?' Shaun clarified wearily. 'Lucy is dead. I don't care if she was a traitor or not.'

'You know what, Shaun, there is one reason that it matters.' Desmond turned back to his father resolutely. 'Take the implant out of me.'

'Desmond...'

'No, Clay just proved it! It was Juno that made me kill Lucy, not Abstergo. I don't need the implant any more, you can take it out.'

'I can promise you that I won't set it off,' Bill assured him. 'I'll put the remote buttons away, and when we have the time I'll organise the operation to have it removed.'

'"When we have the time"?' Desmond laughed humourlessly. 'When this is all over, you mean. When you don't need me any more.'

'For God's sake...'

But suddenly Desmond was sick of talking to his father and hearing excuses about why he was effectively being kept a prisoner. He deliberately showed the palm of his hand to Bill as he walked away, to crouch down in front of Clay so that they were eye-to-eye.

'Let's finish this,' he said. 'We need to find the Pieces of Eden, right? The ones that will help us to stop the solar flares. Do you know where we need to go next?'

Clay looked at him very carefully for a moment, almost as though making a difficult decision. Finally, in a slow voice, he said, 'I do.'

'Where? Where do we need to go?'

Clay smiled miserably. 'You're not going to like it.'

'Why not?'

'We need to go to Daniel's home turf. We need to go to St Petersburg.'


	4. Chapter 4

**December 21st 1918**

Casmir Kaczmarkiewicz stomped his booted feet in the snow in an attempt to revive his frozen toes, and scowled sulkily at his mother. She was deep in conversation with a stranger, both of them wearing thick hoods pulled up over their heads, and she had not paid any attention to him since they had left the train. Casmir had been carried from the station but once they reached the big palace she had set him down in the snow and told him to wait while she spoke to her friends.

'Look at the palace,' she'd urged him. 'That is where the Tsars used to live. Isn't it beautiful?'

It was beautiful, but beauty was of no use to Casmir or to his freezing feet. He was six years old and a bad-tempered child, who still resented his father for going away to war and dying. Ever since then, Casmir had been taken with his mother on trips that were not holidays, and she seemed angry and worried all the time. At night he could sometimes hear her crying very quietly, and it made him feel hot inside his chest. He would curl up and press the heels of his hands against his ears, trying to sleep through it.

Now, though, he was deliberately trying to listen in on his mother's conversation, mainly because he knew that she did not want him to.

'He is late,' she was saying to her friend, who had a thick, bushy beard. 'We cannot stay here long, the Bolsheviks...'

'Don't worry, he will be here. Nikolai has never ... ah, you see? He approaches now.'

Casmir's mother turned her head and Casmir looked in the same direction, at a dark, growing blotch in the curtain of heavily falling snow. The man had managed to get very close before they spotted him, and he walked past Casmir before he reached the other two, glancing down at the small child disinterestedly before continuing on. He was a wearing a furry hat which covered all of the hair on his head, but Casmir could see the thick, grey moustache which rested on his upper lip.

'Konstancja,' the man said to Casmir's mother, sounding disapproving. 'You did not need to come, it is dangerous here.'

'It is dangerous everywhere,' Konstancja replied firmly. 'My husband is dead and my home is gone. The Assassins have saved my life and the life of my child, and I intend to repay that debt.'

'Very well.' The Russian man with the moustache looked about them before reaching inside his travelling cloak and pulling out a strange pendant that was attached to a chain around his neck. 'I need you both to keep a watch for the Templars. It is too risky for me to carry this any longer, and I hope that I will not have need of it again. There is a place, a temple of sorts, hidden deep underneath the Palace. I will hide the Shard there, out of reach to all but the most worthy.'

Konstancja's eyes widened as she looked at the golden fragment. 'But Nikolai, surely it would be better to keep it with us. Any kind of protection...'

'The Shard does not offer protection,' Nikolai interrupted harshly. 'It may deflect bullets, but it attracts them also. Everywhere I have carried it, the Templars have chased me. They will not give up until it it out of my hands, do you see? I have a family now, my wife and children. If I do not rid myself of the Shard, they will be the ones to suffer.'

The bushy-bearded man was staring as the Shard as though hypnotised. 'Nikolai, if you wish to relieve yourself of the artefact then I could...'

'No,' Nikolai cut in again, and the other man's face clouded temporarily with anger. 'It is better if no one has it.'

With that he headed towards the palace, and disappeared quickly in the falling snow. Konstancja worried at her lower lip, and then saw her son staring at her and forced a smile onto her face. She knelt down and opened her arms, and after a pause Casmir walked forward and allowed her to pick him up, balancing him on her hip.

'How are you, _mój drogi_?' she asked him tenderly. 'Not too cold, I hope.'

Casmir opened his mouth to answer her, probably with a complaint or a demand. Before he was able to speak, however, he saw her lips part in a strange gasp. He gaped at her, bewildered, as blood whispered from her mouth and dribbled down her front. Then she jerked and fell to the ground, and Casmir went down with her.

He was dazed by the fall, and when he came back to himself he found that his legs were trapped beneath her torso and the two of them were half-buried in the freezing snow. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the bushy-bearded man's boots tramping away from them indifferently. Casmir shut his eyes in fear and tried to pull himself away from the snow, deeper into his mother's rapidly receding warmth.

' _Matka_ , I am,' he whined. 'I am cold.'

* * *

**October 18th 2012**

The _Dvortsoviy Most_ \- Palace Bridge - was light of foot traffic at this time of day. Daniel stopped in the centre of it and leaned out a little, staring over the waters of the Neva. The river was very wide here, where two forks of it met briefly before dividing once more as it wound separate paths through the city. To the North he could see the _Petropavlovskaya Krepost_ and the spire which rose up above it, and with a shiver he recalled Nikolai's memory of scaling the spire at night in order to scout out the surrounding area and get a decent view of the Winter Palace. The Palace itself sat across the water: blocky and opulent, with a thousand windows for its thousand rooms.

A truck rattled by on the road. Daniel had seen this bridge being built, seen it covered in scaffolding and shouting workers, inside a memory that was now almost a century old. Coming back to St. Petersburg was dangerous, he knew. There was a greater likelihood of the Bleeding Effect taking hold when he explored places that his ancestors had visited, the ghosts and voices rising up in a kind of hyper-aggressive nostalgia.

Daniel checked his watch, and then pulled a pill bottle out of his pocket and tipped a blue capsule into his palm. He swallowed it dry, grimacing but knowing that it was necessary. He'd been at the airport when he'd received the call from Alan Rikkin.

'Daniel. Have you picked up your ticket yet?'

'Checking up on me, Alan?'

'Have you?'

'No, not yet. I'm in the line.'

'Good. Change of plans. You're not going back to the States. You're going to Russia.'

'Exile, is it?'

'Stow the fucking comedy, Daniel. I've just had to listen to Warren's report on how you fucked up in Rome and the man is not happy. Luckily for you, I've decided to give you one more chance, especially since this latest operation is within your area of expertise.'

Daniel had pressed the cell phone a little closer to his ear. Rikkin continued.

'We have a report that Bill Miles and his team have chartered a flight to St. Petersburg. That's a hell of a risk to take when the Assassin presence is as weak as it is over there. I want you to follow them first to find out what they want, and then I want you to bring me Desmond Miles, Clay Kaczmarek, and the Apple. We'll launch that satellite in December if it's the last thing I do.'

He had not bothered waiting for them at the airport; doing so would risk derailing whatever mission the Assassin team were on. Besides which, Daniel did not need to chase them down. He smiled as he heard a whisper in his ear. It was not the Bleeding Effect.

The voice was staticky at first, and so Daniel lifted a hand to his ear and pressed Desmond Miles' lost and forgotten headset a little closer to his head, waiting for the words to become clear.

* * *

They had flown here using a private plane belonging to the Assassins, enabling them to bring the Animus with them. Upon landing in St Petersburg there had been a rented van waiting for them and they piled all of their equipment into it before climbing in themselves.

Clay had to be half-carried into the vehicle. Returning to a place that had been previously visited in the Animus carried increased risks of Bleeding Effect attacks, and in preparation for their arrival he'd been given a large dose of anti-psychotics. He seemed to be aware of who he was, but as a side effect of the drugs was incredibly restless, twitching almost constantly, and his hands were shaking too much to get a proper grip on anything. When at their highest altitude during the flight he had gasped and clutched at his chest, complaining of chest pain and tachycardia. Once they were on the road to the city centre, Shaun dug into the medical bag they'd brought with them and found some anticholinergics to help control the shakes and twitching.

Clay gave the historian a small, exhausted smile as he saw the pills being tipped out into the bottle cap. 'Drugs to control the side effects of the drugs to control the side effects of the Animus,' he commented. 'Man, takes me back. I think this is how Abstergo got so good at producing pharmaceuticals.'

Shaun hesitated. 'If you don't want them...'

'No, anything's better than feeling like my bones are trying to crawl out of my skin. You're going to have to spoon-feed me, though. If I try to take them myself I'll only drop them.'

Clay opened his mouth and Shaun obligingly dropped the two pills onto his tongue, then held a bottle of water to Clay's lips. Once he'd swallowed the drugs, Clay held his hand out for the remainder of the water.

'I'd better keep that with me. The anticholinergics will dry my mouth out. Among other things.'

'Jesus,' said Desmond, who had been watching the exchange. 'Is this what I've got to look forward to?'

'You've got a way to go still,' Clay replied, turning his head away from Shaun to look Desmond in the eye. It was hard to tell if he was still shaking as badly, or whether it was simply the motion of the van on the bumpy road. He'd washed and shaved since his liberation from the hospital, and whether it was due to the medication or simply to being amongst his Assassin comrades once more, he seemed marginally saner. 'Abstergo had me for two years, and I was inside an Animus for most of that.'

'No wonder you went nuts,' Desmond said without thinking, and immediately hated himself. 'Sorry, I...'

'No, it's fine.' Clay grinned. 'It's nice to hear someone call it what it is. My doctor kept using the word "confused". Ha! Confused is not being able to remember where you put your keys. Kicking the shit out of a wall because you're seeing ghosts, that's not confusion. Not being able to remember your own name is not confusion. Trying to fillet your arms with a ballpoint pen because you think it's the only way out, that's not confusion either. I'm crazy, Desmond. Don't be afraid to say it.'

An awkward silence followed. Shaun seemed to realise that he was staring and, when Clay looked back at him, cleared his throat and shuffled away to the other end of the van, pretending to look at some local maps.

Clay watched him go, the smile lingering on his face. 'I think I scared him off.' He glanced back at Desmond. 'You can pretend to be busy as well, if you like.'

'Hey, I used to work as a bartender. In New York. I have a high threshold for crazy,' Desmond said, though he couldn't deny that he still felt uncomfortable, and he doubted that he was doing a good job of covering it up. Clearing his throat, he asked, 'Are you going to be OK when we get to the Palace? You don't have to come with me, you know.'

'I want to. Besides, I know what the Shard looks like.' Clay's eyes suddenly became temporarily unfocused, flicking back and forth distantly as though watching a different scene playing out before him. Desmond hurriedly tried to bring him back to the present.

'What about Daniel? It was his ancestor who hid it here, after all. Won't he already have been by to pick it up?'

Clay shook his head, appearing to shake off his visions in the process. 'No, think about it,' he snapped impatiently. 'According to Casmir's memory, Nikolai didn't hide the Shard until both his kids were already born. You can only unlock the genetic memories of one ancestor up until the point that they conceive your next most recent one, that's why the last memory you see is always f-fucking.' He bared his teeth again, his mood switching back to one of amusement in the blink of an eye. 'God, I still remember Sofia. Did you ever get that far, with Ezio?'

'Uh, no...' Desmond was suddenly wondering if Shaun needed any help going through those maps.

Clay closed his eyes and hummed in satisfaction at the memory, the timbre of his voice very low when he spoke again. 'Sofia Sartor. Beautiful redhead. Ezio was a lucky old bastard. First time in a long while I felt privileged, reliving that particular memory. I still remember the way her skin smelt, the ink on her fingers, those tiny hairs on the insides of her thighs...'

The van came to a halt and Desmond jumped to his feet hurriedly, nearly falling over in the process. 'Hey, would you look at that, we're here.'

They were a couple of streets away from the palace. The air was cold but Desmond and Clay were dressed lightly, knowing that they would be unable to shed any layers once inside the Palace. Rebecca affixed a headset to Clay's left ear and tested it to make sure it was working. Finally satisfied, she patted Clay encouragingly on the shoulder and nodded at Bill as though giving him permission to speak.

The grey-haired leader stepped forward, looking from his son to Clay and back again as he spoke. 'The next guided tour of the Palace starts in twenty minutes. Take the tour, use your eagle vision, and try to spot the entrance to the temple. I warn you, it's now a museum with millions of dollars worth of antiques in it, so security is going to be high. When you give us the signal, Rebecca will shut down the cameras and set off an alarm in another part of the building to take most of the heat off your backs and give you a chance to slip away.'

'And what will you be doing?' Clay asked, an obvious challenge in his voice.

Bill squared his shoulders. 'I'll be back here...'

'Of course you will,' Clay interrupted before he could finish. 'You're the brains of the operation, huh? Come on, Desmond.'

They walked in silence for most of the way to the Palace. Desmond was armed this time, the wrist-blade covered with a temporary casing that would shield it from any metal detectors. Clay hadn't been given a weapon.

They soon passed a front of buildings on Nesky Prospekt and the Winter Palace came into view, rising in shining, symmetrical splendour over Palace Square. Desmond saw Clay shudder and begin taking deeper, faster breaths, and laid a hand between his shoulderblades to reassure him and keep him moving. They managed to make it halfway across the Square, moving between the groups of tourists, before Clay broke down completely.

It took Desmond a couple of seconds to realise what had happened. Clay had simply gone from walking forward to landing hard on his knees, and was staring down at an apparently nondescript patch of ground, about fifty metres from the Alexander Column. His mouth dropped open and he began speaking rapidly in Polish, tears filling his eyes.

' _Matka! Jestem zimny! Chcę iść do domu, matka!_ '

'Oh crap, Clay, this is really bad timing,' Desmond muttered, showing his teeth to the staring tourists in something that he hoped resembled a smile as he leaned down to pull at Clay's arm.

' _Obudź się, matka!_ '

'Yeah, it's really beautiful,' Desmond replied loudly. To an elderly Russian woman who was wrapped in scarves and surrounded by grandchildren, gaping at the pair of them, he explained, 'He's just overcome by the, uh, architecture.'

The old woman sucked on her gums disapprovingly and hurried the brood of children away. In desperation, Desmond wrapped his arm around Clay's head and covered the weeping man's eyes with the palm of his hand. Amazingly, this seemed to work. Clay shook and whimpered like a child but allowed himself to be guided to his feet. Desmond clumsily walked the other man away from the spot of ground that seemed to be troubling him, keeping one hand over Clay's eyes as they continued their approach towards the Palace. After about fifty paces, Clay reached up and pulled Desmond's fingers away.

'What the hell was that about?' Desmond demanded angrily, seeing that Clay appeared to be in his own mind again.

'Nothing,' Clay replied, though the haunted look remained behind in his eyes. 'Just ... bad memories.'

* * *

**February 14th 1945**

The winter had stretched on too long and the day was viciously cold as Casmir began the long walk home, his heels striking the frozen earth as though he had a personal vendetta against it. The coal mine was a good five mile walk from Casmir's home in Serene, Colorado, and he could not afford the bus, let alone an automobile of his own. The journey was made no easier by the knowledge that when he finally reached home he would be met by a weeping wife and a silent, staring child. When they had received the letter that morning, Sarah had begged him to stay home, and he'd responded by asking nastily if she would be happy to let them all go hungry because of the day's lost wages.

Casmir had grown into a broad-shouldered, low-browed man with a sullen demeanour and a quick and violent temper. His instinct upon meeting new people was to glower suspiciously at them, and this is what he did to the well-dressed man in the fancy winter hood who hurried across the street to join him.

'How do you do?' the man asked, extending a hand. He had slate-grey eyes and a well-trimmed grey beard to match. 'Rennison. William Rennison.'

Casmir kept his hands planted firmly in his pockets - he had no gloves - and huffed out a breath. 'Recruiter, are you? Piss off, I'm doing my part. Or do you want your boys to go without fuel this year?'

Rennison laughed. 'I'm not from the United States Army, Mr Kaczmarkiewicz. Though you might call me a recruiter of sorts.'

From the first mention of his old name, Casmir had tensed his shoulders and begun to walk a little faster. 'Name's Kaczmarek. I think you have the wrong man.'

'Casmir Kaczmarkiewicz?' Rennison persisted, easily speeding up to match Casmir's gait. 'Son of Mateusz and Konstancja Kaczmarkiewicz?'

'What do you want?' Casmir demanded abruptly, stopping in his tracks and turning to face his pursuer.

Rennison smiled at him. 'I have been looking for you. Our families have a lot of history.' At that, he slipped the glove from his left hand, discreetly showing Casmir the brand on his ring finger. His expression turned a little more serious as he went on. 'These are troubled times, Casmir. There is more to this war than you know, and the Assassins are falling to Templar attacks that are clouded and forgotten in the midst of larger battles. To be frank, we need all the help we can get.'

Casmir twisted his face into an ugly, bitter sneer. 'Don't you dare condescend to me about war, Mr Rennison. I know what war is. I lost my father and my son to war, my mother too, and not one of them knew what they were really fighting for.'

'For freedom!' Rennison exclaimed passionately. 'My God, is there any higher cause? I am sorry for your loss, Casmir - for your losses - but there is still so much to be gained.'

'Get away from me,' Casmir snarled. 'You stay away from me and you stay away from my family for good. I don't care what kind of legacy I've got in my blood. I don't care about it and I don't want it.' He turned with deliberate dismissiveness and continued the journey home, but Rennison pursued him still, eyeing Casmir's chattering teeth and the layer of coal dust on his face.

'Is this life so much better?' Rennison asked, his voice hard now. 'Is it better that you and your children and your children's children live out their lives as day labourers, scraping for pennies in the dirt?'

'Yes. That is better.'

Rennison took a deep breath through his nose, his eyes bright with anger now. 'You can make that choice for yourself, Casmir. But when the time comes I will have this same conversation with your youngest son, and I will give him the chance to join us, as is his birthr-'

He was cut off by the thick, heavy fist which landed on his jaw and send him sprawling into the snow, clutching at his face and coughing a tooth out onto the frost. Before he had a chance to recover, Casmir placed his boot firmly on Rennison's chest, kicking him over and holding him down.

'You listen up, and you listen well,' he growled. 'You will leave my family alone. The Kaczmareks are done with the Assassins for good, do you hear? You people and your petty fight have brought us nothing but pain and misery, and I'm putting a stop to it right now.' He leaned more of his substantial weight onto Rennison's chest until he heard a rib crack and the resultant cry of pain.

Satisfied, and feeling a lot better than he had upon setting out from the mine, Casmir walked away, leaving the Assassin curled up and broken upon the ground.


	5. Chapter 5

'Museums are dangerous.'

'Huh?' Desmond, who had been staring up at the ceiling with his mouth hanging slightly open, turned to look at Clay. He was squirming a little uncomfortably in his own skin and staring at a painting on the wall as though it was about to come to life and attack him.

'All this old stuff,' Clay explained, tearing his eyes away from the painting. 'It's going to be confusing, for people like us. People who've used the Animus. It's easier to keep a grip on reality when you're surrounded by computers and cables and iPhones, but in this place there's just thousands of years of history waiting to swallow us up, like fucking quicksand, and it's over your head before you even have time to realise that you're in trouble.'

A silence followed Clay's words. Not just Desmond's silence, but the silence of the entire tour group that they had been standing in, who were now staring at - or deliberately looking away from - the loudly ranting American in their midst. Even the tour guide seemed to have forgotten what she was supposed to be doing. Desmond flashed her his most charming smile before leaning in to mutter in Clay's ear.

'Good job, buddy. We're really blending in with the crowd right now.'

Pulling herself together, the tour guide smiled widely at all of them and announced something in Russian that presumably meant the tour was about to begin. Realising that the entrance to the temple could be anywhere, Desmond took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The Eagle Vision ... well, it was difficult to describe exactly how it worked and how he activated it. It was almost like flexing a tiny muscle inside his brain - a muscle that he had never been aware of up until a few weeks ago. He felt the switch first as a sharpening and clarifying of all the sound around him, and when he opened his eyes the world was awash in a strange blue filter.

The first thing that Desmond noted was that the stern-looking security guards were highlighted in glowing red. A little unnerving, but it would be useful when it came to giving them the slip. Clay was picked out in a reassuring blue. The only other thing that stood out was - Desmond noticed with a shudder - a splatter of glowing blood residue on one of the museum's busts, as though it had once been used to bludgeon someone to death. Hurriedly, Desmond shut down the sixth sense.

'Nothing in here,' he said softly to Clay as they began to walk with the tour group into the first of the galleries.

As they progressed through the museum, Desmond did a careful 360 degree sweep of each room with his Eagle Vision activated before shutting the extra sense down for a respite period. Leaving himself open to that much sensory input for too long gave him a headache and made him feel disoriented when he finally re-emerged. Glancing over to his left, Desmond sensed from the way in which his companion was staring that Clay was keeping his Eagle Vision open without any break, and wondered if this was such a good idea.

It was difficult to avoid being distracted by the museum and its contents. Desmond had never been all that interested in museums, and was even less enamoured by the washed up relics of civilisation that were locked away in glass cabinets now that he'd watched history unfolding before his very eyes. Shaun would probably be writhing in delight if he had come along for this tour, but Desmond glanced at most of the objects on display with only passing interest. However, the cumulative effect of the interior architecture - with the gleaming patterns of its tiled floors, elaborately designed ceilings and shining coloured walls, and the masses of golden jewellery, glinting weaponry and austere marble statues on display - was a little overwhelming.

The Roman bust wasn't the last blood-stained object that Desmond saw. With his Eagle Vision he saw slick red layers on the blades of swords, tiny drips on necklaces and rings, and small smears on statues. Apparently historians were being very literal when they spoke about humanity having a bloodstained history.

They were passing through a grand hall with twenty columns spread out in a grid pattern when Desmond saw it: a flash of gold amidst the crowds of visitors. He frowned and stopped walking, peering closely at all the walls, trying to spot a statue with a hidden lever, or perhaps a knot in the panelling that could be triggered, but there was nothing there now. Strangely, Desmond could have sworn that the golden shape - whatever it was - had been moving.

He turned with his mouth open ready to ask Clay for help, and found the other Assassin watching him with unnerving intensity.

'You saw him too, didn't you?' Clay said softly, the corners of his mouth quirking up.

'Who?'

'Cross.'

Desmond stopped walking, allowing the tour group to move away, parting around them. He stared at Clay disbelievingly. 'Cross is _here_?' he hissed.

'Of course. You didn't think we'd shake him that easily, did you?'

Desmond clenched his fists in frustration. 'How long ago did you spot him?'

'Just after we arrived.'

'And you didn't think it would be a good idea to mention that there's a fucking _Templar_ following us?'

Bill's voice came in over their headsets; he had obviously been listening in. 'Desmond, keep your voice down,' he said urgently. 'Keep moving with the tour group. Under no circumstances must you alert Cross to the fact that you've seen him.'

'Shouldn't we get out of here?' Desmond asked, walking briskly until he and Clay were swallowed up by the tour group once more. He might be armed now, but he was in no hurry to go toe-to-toe with Daniel Cross again, not after what had happened the last time. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously, feeling the hairs prickling where Cross was surely watching him.

'We didn't fly all the way out here just so that you could back out at the first sign of a challenge, Desmond,' Bill replied irritably.

Rebecca's voice cut in next. 'There must be a reason he hasn't tried to nab either one of you yet. Maybe he's following you to find out what you're here for. If you try to make a run for it then he's bound to try to stop you. Keep going and you might get the chance to lose him, or even take him out.'

'Perfect.'

They came to a gallery littered with small statues, the walls lined with shining green tiles, the ceiling a series of arching blue and white canopies. The tour guide said something and Desmond heard Clay give a soft laugh beside him.

'What's so funny?'

'She just said the name of this room.'

'Yeah? What's it called?'

'The Jupiter Hall.'

The tour group came to a halt in front of the room's obvious showpiece: a larger-than-life statue of a seated man with thick curling hair and a full beard, his body in white marble and the sheet that was draped around him done in bronzed metal. He had a sceptre in his left hand and on the ground next to him was a bronze eagle with its beak poised over the sceptre, as though it were about to wrench it from his grasp. His right hand was held out in front of him, and in it he was clutching a smaller statue, this one an angel of some kind, her body erect and graceful as if the man had just summoned her there. Desmond felt strangely uncomfortable looking at it, and couldn't shake the feeling that he had seen this piece of art somewhere else, a long time ago.

'Jupiter. He was one of Those Who Came Before, right?' he whispered to Clay, trying to move his lips as little as possible. 'They called him Tinia.'

''Look at him,' Clay breathed, by way of reply.

It took Desmond a second to realise what this meant, but with a surge of realisation he opened up his Eagle Vision and used it to look upon the statue of Jupiter.

The first thing that he saw was the glowing red graffiti scribbled all over the seemingly pure white marble, forming words in Latin that Desmond did not recognise. He wondered how they had come to be there, and guessed that this statue had once been used as some kind of sacrificial altar. He allowed his gaze to rake down over the seated figure of the man to the pedestal that he was sat upon, and that was when he saw it: a small knot of gold that called out to him; an undiscernible section of marble that would be invisible when viewed by the naked eye.

'Got it,' Desmond exclaimed quietly, shutting down his Eagle Vision once more. 'Guys, I've got it, I've found the entrance!'

'Are you sure?' Bill demanded. 'You're only going to get one shot at this, Desmond.'

'I'm as sure as I can be, unless you want me to activate it in front of all these people.'

'Alright, Desmond,' Rebecca cut in, the tapping of keyboard keys coming in beneath her voice. 'I'm going to activate an alarm on the top floor. According to security protocols, they should evacuate all the visitors and the security staff will thin out on the lower floors. You and Clay should find somewhere to hide.'

Desmond nodded and gripped Clay's arm tightly to maneouvre him a little closer to the statue. Just as the rest of the tour group turned to move away, there came the shrill sound of a bell ringing in the distance. Their guide stared up at the ceiling for a moment, open-mouthed, and Desmond took the opportunity to fist his hand into the back of Clay's shirt and drag him behind the statue and down to the cold tiles of the floor. They vanished from view just in time as the tour guide recovered from her surprise and began speaking rapidly to the tourists, gesturing for them to follow her. In a cloud of mutters and grumbles, the rest of the museum's visitors trickled out of the Jupiter Hall, their footsteps echoing as they moved.

The coast seemed to be clear when someone new entered the hall and Desmond tensed once more. Peering out from the side of the statue, he saw a lone security guard walking slowly through the room, peering into the corners in an obvious attempt to spot any stragglers.

'Oh, fuck,' Clay breathed suddenly.

'What is it?' Desmond asked, feeling Clay's limbs starting to shake next to him. The sound of his feet tapping against the floor seemed incredibly loud, and out of the corner of his eye Desmond saw the guard look up sharply.

' _Nascondimi_...' Clay was staring wildly at nothing, and before Desmond could stop him he suddenly scrabbled out from behind the statue and pushed himself up the wall, speaking in a panicked, pleading whisper. ' _Nascondimi, per favore_...'

Desmond dropped a head into his hand despairingly as he heard the security guard yell in indignation and surprise before running over to where the two of them had previously been concealed. Desmond waited until the man was very close before standing up and walking out with his arms raised.

'Hey, I think my friend is sick...' He was close enough now, and whipped out his right foot to smash into the security guard's shin, dropping the man to the floor with a cry. 'He suffers from terminal bad timing.' As the guard pulled out his baton, Desmond kicked out with his other foot to knock the weapon away. Finally he dropped down behind the guard and wrapped an arm around his throat to restrict his breathing, as he had seen Ezio do a hundred times before. He was a little nervous about doing this for real - he didn't want to kill this guard, who was just doing his job and probably had a family at home - and for a long time there was no sound in the room save for harsh choking noises as Desmond concentrated on his opponent and waited for the right moment to let go.

As soon as the guard went limp, Desmond released him and dragged the unconscious body over to the statue. When this task was accomplished he stood up and glared furiously at Clay, who was holding his head and shaking a little.

'Nice going,' he said, and immediately felt a little guilty when Clay looked up at him, his eyes like those of a hunted animal. Continuing in a slightly softer tone he asked, 'Are you OK?'

'Let's just get this over with,' Clay replied tersely, still holding on to his head as if he was afraid it might fall off.

Desmond nodded and opened up his Eagle Vision in order to find the right spot on the statue again. As he crouched down and laid his hands upon it, he felt for a moment the pupilless orbs of Jupiter's eyes watching him expectantly, and experienced a moment of extreme unease as he pressed the segment of marble and felt it give underneath his fingers.

There was a grinding sound behind him and the floor gave a slight tremor. Standing up and turning, Desmond watched the tiles of the floor dividing and then cascading down, sliding backwards - one into another - to reveal a dark hole in the centre of the hall. It was lucky that Desmond had moved the security guard, or the man would probably have dropped into the opening when the floor moved.

Approaching the lip of the hole carefully, Desmond saw that the inside was made of some manner of smooth, dark, ugly stone, and that instead of steps there was simply a steep slope that disappeared into the blackness. They'd better be able to find another way out, because this was going to be a one-way trip.

'Alright, here goes,' Desmond said, pulling a small but powerful glow stick from the pocket of his jeans and snapping it in several places to release the light. He attached it by a cord to one of his belt loops before finally looking back again. 'You coming?'

His heart sank as he saw Clay, who was backing away from the whole, wide-eyed and looking nauseous, shaking his head rapidly.

'That was a rhetorical question,' Desmond clarified firmly. 'You're coming.'

'Why?' Clay asked, his voice small and helpless, looking from the hole in the floor back up to Desmond with pleading eyes.

'Why? Because ... Look, we don't know how long this thing is going to stay open, and the security guys aren't going to stay away forever. What do you think they'll do if they find you here?'

'Why are we here, Desmond? Seriously, what are we doing here? Why do we do this?' Clay had his back to the wall now and had his fingers curled against it like he was looking for somewhere to hold on.

'Little thing called the end of the world, remember?' Desmond could have sworn there was a ticking in the air, starting slow but getting faster by the second: a countdown. In desperation, he darted over to where Clay was flattened against the wall and grabbed him by the shoulder, pushing him towards the temple entrance.

Clay was hyperventilating now, caught in the midst of some kind of panic attack. 'Don't make me go down there, Desmond,' he begged. 'I can't ... I can't...'

Desmond grabbed Clay's other shoulder and turned him around so that they were face to face, shaking him a little. 'Don't make me go down there alone,' he countered.

While he waited for an answer, Desmond pulled a second glow stick from his jeans, activated it, and attached it to a belt loop over Clay's hip. Between them, the two light sources revealed an extra foot of the temple entrance.

'Ready?' Desmond asked.

'No,' Clay replied, but before Desmond could protest he took a deep, steadying breath and added, 'Let's do it.'

They stood side-by-side on the edge, looking down into the darkness. Then they jumped.

Desmond managed to break up the impact by hitting the slope heels-first, but fell backwards immediately and felt pain radiating up through his tailbone as he landed more or less squarely on his ass. There was no time to nurse his wounds, however. The slope was a great deal steeper than it had appeared from above and Desmond was descending at an absurdly fast rate, desperately trying to slow himself down with his feet. If he collided with anything at this speed he would most likely shatter a few bones.

He slid for what felt like an age, but was probably only around thirty seconds. Clay was nowhere in sight but presumably he had to be some way ahead because Desmond heard him call out a word ... was that "jump"?

The glow stick illuminated Desmond's surroundings for about six feet feet in every direction, the pool of light moving with him so that from far above he must have looked like the beam of a laser pointer. Desmond saw the slope smoothing out to a very narrow ledge before the black granite of the ground gave way to a very different kind of blackness: a deep, empty void that made terror well up inside him as he realised that the slope did not end with a floor, but with a drop.

_Jump._

A wordless cry tore its way out of his mouth as Desmond felt his feet hit the small ledge at the bottom and, without thinking, used his momentum to push off again, to leap - arms outstretched blindly - over the gaping chasm with nothing but a prayer that he would be saved.

He was. The breath was knocked out of his chest as he collided with some kind of wide beam, flat at the top and rounded underneath, which he hooked his outstretched arms over and clung to desperately, his heart pounding.

Then Clay was there, walking along the beam, crouched low. 'Hang on.'

'You think?'

Clay gave a shaky laugh, then lay down on the beam and grabbed one of Desmond's dangling legs, lifting it up and onto the narrow platform.

Desmond managed to pry his arms from around the beam, which appeared to be made out of the same smooth stone that he had seen in the temples beneath the Vatican and the Santa Maria Aracoeli. For a moment or two he and Clay simply sat there, like two children on a playground swing, staring down into the pit that had nearly claimed their lives, and Desmond felt the jitters smooth out and give way to proper anger.

'Haven't these people heard of fucking stairs?' he yelled suddenly, the furious words echoing all the way down.

Clay gave a breathless laugh beside him. 'I think it's to weed out the unworthy.'

'It's an asshole move, is what it is. How far down do you think it goes?'

'Far enough.'

'Yeah, right. Hopefully Cross will try to follow us and get caught off guard. That'll be one of our problems out of the way.'

Finally confident that his legs would be able to support him, Desmond stood up on the beam and turned away from the slope to peer at the path ahead of them. The beam was the first of many, illuminated by blue patterns scribed upon them, and they stretched out into the distance. With a sinking feeling, Desmond realised that there was still a fair bit of jumping to do.

'Well,' he said, trying to sound positive. 'That Piece of Eden isn't going to find itself. Come on.'

It was easier, now that he had time to plan the jumps. The instincts that he had learned from Ezio took over his body and guided him through the air, finding a firm landing for his feet each time. He couldn't help but feel a certain amount of anxiety for Clay, but it seemed that the other Assassin was, if anything, even more capable than Desmond himself. At one point it seemed that they had reached a dead end, with no more glowing beams extending out before them, but Clay pointed to the wall and to a series of hand- and foot-holds embedded in it. Desmond nodded and led the way for the climb, his heart pounding a little as he made the mistake of looking down into the seemingly endless nothingness below.

Finally his fingers slipped from the vertical surface onto a horizontal one, and Desmond realised that he had reached the top of the wall. With a groan of relief he pulled himself up and over and then lay sprawled on the cold ground, practically hugging the safety of it.

A few seconds later Clay followed, and Desmond heard him get to his feet and dust off his hands and knees. 'You OK there, Desmond?' he asked.

'Just give me a minute.'

Clay laughed. 'Did you get vertigo? Assassins aren't supposed to get vertigo.'

Desmond rolled over and stood up in order to better glare at Clay. 'You seemed to come down with a pretty bad case of it yourself, earlier on.' He watched the smile slide off Clay's face, but persisted. 'You want to tell me what that was all about?'

'It was nothing,' Clay replied shortly. 'Just...' He stilled for a moment and looked up and around them, at the temple walls and the odd symbols inscribed upon them. 'That's weird,' he muttered.

'What's weird?'

'It's quiet down here.'

'Well, we're about half a mile underground, so...'

'No, not out there, in my head. In my head, it's quiet.' Clay looked a little uncomfortable, as if he found the silence disturbing.

'Oh.' Desmond wasn't quite sure how to respond to this. 'Is it the drugs kicking in?'

Clay shook his head. 'No, they started working ages ago, and they've never worked this well.' He squinted into the distance. 'There.'

Desmond followed his gaze and spotted an illuminated pedestal with something resting atop it, on a platform raised and connected to where they stood by a staircase. With an increasingly uncomfortable sense of _deja vu_ , Desmond walked slowly towards and then up the steps.

He didn't see the Piece of Eden until he was very close, for it was small and lay flat upon the top of the pedestal. It looked like a small shard of metal, made from the same material as the Apple. It was vaguely triangular, like a shark's tooth, and the top edge had been encased in a comparitively dull-looking silver in order to attach the whole thing to a slim, weathered chain. Desmond reached out a hand for it, but then hesitated.

'What's wrong?' Clay asked.

Desmond turned his hand over. Outlined beneath the material of his sleeve, he could see the hidden blade with which he had killed Lucy. He looked over at Clay, at his curious expression, at the exposed skin of his throat. What if Desmond touched the Piece of Eden and found himself powerless once more, held in the grip of a god who might decide that Clay was just another obstacle to be cast aside? What if Desmond found himself on the floor of this temple, feeling Clay's warm blood seeping into his clothes?

'Clay?' he said, turning his gaze back to the Piece of Eden. 'Did my dad give you a remote for my implant?'

'No, he didn't.' Desmond could feel Clay watching him carefully.

'Ha. Figures.' There was always the chain of the thing. So long as he didnt allow it to touch his skin, surely he would be OK? Wrapping his sleeve over his hand as an extra precaution, Desmond reached out, carefully plucked the Piece of Eden's chain between two fingers and lifted it.

It happened in the very moment that the Piece of Eden lost contact with the pedestal. There was a burst of orange light in front of them and Desmond shielded his eyes with one arm, the Piece of Eden thudding against his chest as he did so.

_You have arrived._

The voice was not coming from any real source, but seemed to be underneath his very skin. Desmond lowered his arm and that was when he saw her: a woman that he had only ever glimpsed before, but whose voice still haunted his dreams. Her head was adorned with some strange form of helmet, and her eyes were severe and frightening, her hair drifting about her head as though it were independently alive.

Desmond knew her name. He was unlikely to ever forget it.

Juno.

'You!' he said, and just like that Desmond was no longer afraid. He was angry. 'You see her too, right?' he asked Clay desperately.

Clay seemed to be having trouble breathing. 'I see her.'

'That's the bitch who made me kill Lucy. Hey! Can you hear me?'

Juno's eyes seemed to smolder a little. Her mouth moved but made no sound, for once again the words were delivered directly into his brain. _In the primitive sense that your understanding can grasp, yes, I hear you._

Clay groaned and clutched at his temple. 'I guess this explains why it's so quiet down here. She didn't want anyone else butting in while she's talking.'

Juno turned to him, and her very gaze seemed to light up Clay's face further. _You should not be here_ , she said, a frown implicit in the words.

'I agree completely,' Clay gasped in response.

 _It matters not. Your role is played out already._ She turned back to Desmond, smoothly dismissing Clay with the gesture. _Now, heed my words..._

'I'm not heeding your anything,' Desmond interrupted furiously. 'Last time I tried heeding you, Lucy wound up dead.'

Juno surveyed at him coldly. _The message will be delivered, whether you wish it or not._

The thought speared Desmond's brain like something physical and he fell to his knees, crying out and clutching at his head as the information poured in. He barely saw it as it flashed past, but he saw the important parts: the Earth getting closer and closer, as though he were a meteor rushing towards it, then the vague shape of North America, getting closer still, seeking out a single location, a single spot, and he was going to crash into the ground, he was going to crash...

Desmond fell, not onto the patch of grass that he had seen in the vision, but on the cold stone floor of the temple. He lay there for a few moments, trying to catch his breath.

 _It is done_ , he felt Juno say. _You now know where you must go. Your final destination. The Grand Temple. Find the key, and open the door..._

'No.'

Juno fell silent, and Desmond wondered if this stored version of her did not have the programming to cope with a refusal. He climbed shakily to his feet, and Clay leaned down to grip his arm and help him up, leaning in to whisper in Desmond's ear as he did so.

'Do you know what you're doing?'

'I know what I'm _not_ doing,' Desmond replied, glaring at the slightly transparent form of Juno. 'I'm not taking any more orders from some psychopathic ghost of a god.'

His eyes watered as Juno met his gaze. _You have to..._

It was Clay's turn to interrupt. 'I think he just established that he _doesn't_ have to.'

Juno's eyes widened and she screeched at him. _BE SILENT. YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE. GET OUT._

'You don't get to decide what should and shouldn't happen,' Desmond snapped, further incensed as he saw Clay visibly buckling under the strain of Juno's onslaught. 'What gave you the right to kill Lucy?'

_She stood in your path._

'And a simple "heads-up, your teammate's a Templar!" wouldn't have worked?'

_You are wasting time with your petty mortal..._

'Too bad, I _am_ a petty mortal, and I'm sick of your cryptic bullshit.'

Juno stepped backwards, not taking her eyes off him, and Desmond felt a sudden awful, welling sensation that he'd just done something very, very stupid.

_No matter. You may twist and whine, but you will still go to the Grand Temple. You will do this or mankind will die ... again._

She vanished.

'Hey, just because you got the last word in, doesn't mean you won the argument! ' Desmond shouted into the darkness. He waited for a few long seconds to see if he would get a reply.

Abruptly, another disembodied voice spoke, making him jump. This time, however, it was Rebecca speaking. 'Uh, OK. I only heard one side of that, but am I right in thinking that you just told Juno where to get off?'

'Oh yes.' That was Bill speaking, and he sounded distinctly unamused. 'I've been on the receiving end of one of those tantrums more times than I can remember.'

'She started it,' Desmond retorted petulantly.

'We'll discuss this when you get back.'

'Fine.'

He turned away from the pedestal, intending to start the search for a way out, and found himself looking directly down the barrel of a gun.

Desmond froze.

Daniel smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [Statue of Jupiter](http://www.asergeev.com/pictures/archives/2009/758/jpeg/16.jpg) mentioned in this chapter really is on display in The Winter Palace, though I don't know if it's the key to any underground passages. It was made at some point in the first century for display in the country home of a Roman nobleman.


	6. Chapter 6

There is something in the simple arrangement of shapes and shades that make up the view of the business end of a gun that has the power to make any rational human freeze on the spot and also, in some cases, immediately empty the contents of their bowels and/or bladder. Luckily for Desmond, he was only afflicted with the former problem, though he was in no mood to count his blessings.

Daniel Cross tilted his head a little to one side as though peering around his pistol and smiled at the two Assassins before him. With his goatee and slightly sharp features, there was something uniquely devilish in his expression.

Clay was the first of them to speak. 'Hello, Daniel,' he said, in an impossibly calm voice. 'How's the head?'

Daniel glanced over at him and Desmond saw the yellowing residue of a bruise on the left side of his head, between his eye and his hairline. 'Kaczmarek,' he responded, raising an eyebrow laconically. 'Out of the adult diapers? Good for you.'

The reason for Clay's words became clear a moment later when Bill's urgent whisper came through on Desmond's headset. 'Desmond, stay calm, and _do not_ let him get his hands on that Piece of Eden. Remember he can't harm you so long as it stays in your possession.'

Lifting a hand to his ear - the ear closest to the bruise - Daniel touched a button on the side of a headset identical to Desmond's own, and Desmond realised with a sinking feeling that it _was_ his headset, the one that he had lost. 

'Thanks for the info, Bill,' Daniel said conversationally. He barely moved; there was a simple shift in the angle of his arm as he adjusted his aim. Clay didn't even flinch as the gun's attention was brought over to him, though his fists clenched at his sides as he stared Daniel down.

Desmond ran through the possible options in his head. He had no idea whether or not Daniel considered Clay to be expendable, but there was no way of testing it without risking Clay being shot. He could try to pass the Shard over, but what if Daniel fired the gun before the action was complete? Tackling the man or making any manner of sudden movement carried the same risks. In the end, Desmond tried for diplomacy. 'What do you want?'

'Throw your earpieces away, for starters. Sorry, Bill, but your boy and I need to have a private conversation.' With that, Daniel flicked the switch on his own headset to cut off any communication from his end.

As Desmond lifted a hand obediently to his ear he heard his father speak frantically, with rustling movements beneath the words. 'Desmond, do what he says, but don't give him the Shard! We'll find you, I promise...'

Desmond had hesitated temporarily in order to listen to his father's message, and Clay had made no move at all. Daniel rolled his eyes and then fired the gun - impossibly loud as it echoed around the temple walls - and out of the corner of his eye Desmond saw Clay yell and spin around a little. Instinctively, without thinking about the consequences, he ripped the headset away from his ear and threw it so that it skittered off the edge of the platform and vanished, before darting to Clay's side and using his body to brace the staggering man against a fall. It took him a moment to realise that there was no blood.

Clay lifted his shaking fingers away from his ear. His headset was gone and in the place where it had been attached to his ear there was nothing left but a slight graze. Daniel had managed to shoot the thing away from his head without so much as clipping Clay's skin. Desmond swallowed hard as he acknowledged the kind of marksmanship that such a shot would have taken.

'He's good,' Clay said in a shaking voice, and Desmond realised that he was laughing. He groaned inwardly at the realisation. The last thing they needed right now was for Clay to go off the deep end.

Daniel took a few steps forward, keeping the gun trained on both of them, and Desmond saw him frown for a moment before he looked at the pedestal, facial muscles tightening and then relaxing. 'In-ter-est-ing,' he said slowly, reaching out with his right hand and hovering it over the platform where the Shard had lain. With a welling sense of disbelief, Desmond recognised the expression in Daniel's eyes, for he had seen Clay using the same expression not so long ago. Daniel had Eagle Vision.

He finally laid his hand upon the pedestal and pressed downwards, and the stone floor beneath them all shuddered, nearly toppling Desmond off-balance. A section of the pedestal had sunken beneath Daniel's fingers and the platform that they were standing on was moving, rising, up towards the distant ceiling of the temple and leaving the steps far behind them, so that there was no escape. Panic flooded through Desmond as he held on to Clay to keep stable and stared upwards at the lightless space above. What if this was some kind of ancient booby trap, and they were all about to be smooshed between the floor and the ceiling? That would be an undignified ending for the Assassins and the Templar alike.

There came an awful moment when the light from his glow stick reached the flat stone surface above them and the rising platform showed no signs of slowing. Suddenly the black sky above them parted and a ray of fluorescent light fell upon them all, followed swiftly by a cascade of foul-smelling water that poured from the twin edges of the parting ceiling like a pair of hideous waterfalls. Daniel scowled at the combination of bright light and cold water, raising an arm to shield his face.

There could be no better opportunity than this.

As the platform rose into the new arena, Desmond released Clay and hurled himself fully at Daniel in a tackle worthy of any dedicated college footballer. Taken off-guard, Daniel hit the ground hard and they both slid across the slippery stone beneath them, soaking in the water that pooled beneath them and dripped down onto them. They came to rest with Daniel's head just over the edge, and the Templar stared up wide-eyed at the fast-closing gap between the platform and the ceiling as Desmond sat up and leaned back, keeping one hand on his opponent's throat to hold him down. He hesitated - just for a moment - with his stomach already churning at the mental image of what was about to happen. 

Decapitation. Well, it would be messy, but it would also be quick, and it would be final. Daniel definitely wouldn't be getting up to chase them after this. Desmond tightened his grip...

... And made the mistake of looking down, of meeting Daniel's eyes. They were wide and unabashedly terrified, like a child's, and _damn it_ Desmond had done this before, had killed in combat before, but it had never been like this. He was close enough to feel Daniel's hot, panting breath on his cheek, and when it happened he would see every detail of it: the slow, wet crunch and then the spray, and the twitching, and finally the stillness.

Daniel struggled. Desmond held him down. The ceiling approached and Daniel was forced to turn his head to one side in order to delay the impact. He was inches from the point of no return. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, not wanting to see the end as it came.

'Oh, _fuck_ this,' Desmond said disgustedly, and with that he released Daniel's throat, grabbed his ankle, and dragged him backwards, back to safety, the closing divide whispering against the damp tips of his blond hair as he slid across the smooth stone.

A gun barrel appeared over Desmond's shoulder and he jumped, only to find that Clay had retrieved Daniel's pistol and was keeping it trained on him as he began to writhe to his feet, gasping and holding his throat.

'That's the second time you've shown him mercy,' Clay commented with a grim smile.

'Yeah, it's a bad habit,' Desmond replied. 

'You have no idea.' Daniel's voice was hoarse as he raised a hand, lifted something over his own head and then lowered it. Desmond saw what it was and cursed inwardly as Daniel stood up with the Shard of Eden on its chain around his neck. Somewhere in the struggle, it must have changed hands. 

Daniel reached out to Clay and made a beckoning gesture. 'I'll take my gun back now, thanks.'

'Sure thing.' Clay squinted down the barrel. 'How about I hand it over one bullet at a time?'

The gun fired for the second time that day, but Daniel was already darting forward. There was a brief flash of blue light as the bullet rebounded harmlessly, a good six inches away from Daniel's skin, and then Clay was crying out as a powerful hand landed on his forearm, Daniel's fingers digging cruelly into the still-raw scar tissue.

Taking advantage of the situation, Desmond lashed out with his fist, aiming for the old bruise on the side of Daniel's head in the hope that he might be able to knock the Templar unconscious just as Clay had. A second later he was howling in pain as his fist collided with what felt like a bubble of electricity, an azure flash filling the air around them and crackling over Desmond's skin as he was thrown backwards to land painfully on his already-bruised tailbone.

He recovered just in time to see Daniel ram the heel of his free hand upwards and into Clay's jaw. Whether it was the final dissipation of the peace offered by the temple, or whether the blow had simply rescrambled Clay's brain, Desmond was never entirely sure. Whichever the reason, Clay's head snapped backwards with the impact and when he looked at Daniel again his eyes were wild and focused on something over his opponent's shoulder.

' _Skurwysyn! Zabiję cię_...'

'There's a good boy,' Daniel said gently, prying the gun from Clay's limp fingers. 'Probably best if you check out now.' He grabbed Clay by the collar and threw him bodily at Desmond, who had been in the process of getting back to his feet. The collision sent them both to the ground, where Clay immediately curled up, hands over his ears, groaning and whispering to himself with his eyes tightly shut. 

Breathing heavily and wincing as he jolted his various injuries, Desmond climbed slowly to his feet, shivering from the adrenaline and the freezing water as he raised his chin and curled his hands into fists.

Daniel was soaked to the skin as well, but no longer seemed to be affected by it. He had the Shard and he had the gun. He raised an eyebrow at Desmond, who finally relaxed his muscles in resignation, feeling wretched and foolish and miserable.

* * *

The platform had emerged into a large chamber, lit by sturdy electric lamps built high on the walls streaked with water and occasional patches of moss. It transpired that they were somewhere in the sewers of St Petersburg, which at least explained the smell, and as Desmond walked slowly down the tunnels with Clay's arm stretched over his shoulders he felt sure that there were rats squeaking down below as they ran over his sneakers. He could hear Daniel walking behind him and he did not have to look back to know that the gun was still firmly trained on him. 

They had been walking for five minutes when Clay stirred from his hypnotised stupor and shifted, extricating his arm and scrubbing at his face with both hands. This action completed, he looked up and around at the tunnels as though he had just woken up. His face was screwed up in concentration but he seemed to be present, at least. Finally he glanced back, and groaned.

'Shit. I thought I'd got him.'

Desmond couldn't help but laugh, despite the situation. 'Not exactly.'

'I'm sorry. Apparently I had business to attend to in another century.'

'Hey, I didn't fare much better, and I can't even pull the crazy card.'

Clay grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck, which was presumably aching after the blow that Daniel had dealt him. 'So what happens now? Is he taking us to his secret lair?'

'No idea. Hey, Daniel!' Desmond called over his shoulder. 'Are you taking us to your secret lair?'

'Shut up and keep walking.'

'I think that's a yes.'

They eventually found a ladder leading to the surface, and Daniel instructed Desmond to go up first and remove the drain cover, with a friendly reminder that if he tried to run, Clay would undergo some very aggressive ventilation.

The sewers opened up in a dirty alley a few streets away from the Winter Palace. Desmond immediately checked his surroundings, trying to find some way to effect their escape, but before they even began moving Daniel delivered another warning.

'I'm going to call for a car to come and pick us up. While we wait...' He took a few steps towards the street and gestured with his gun towards the people hurrying past. 'I will be keeping an eye on you. Make me chase you and I will start firing. If some poor little Russian school kid gets in the way and dies because of your inability to keep fucking still, then that will be on you. Think of this place as a whole city full of hostages, and if you mess me around then they'll be the ones to pay for it.'

It was obvious that he was being completely serious, and Desmond gritted his teeth in frustration. Left with no option, he decided to try reason. 'You were listening in the whole time, weren't you? When we were talking in the museum.'

Daniel already had his cell phone out, but paused for a moment to glance back at Desmond. 'Yeah, so?'

'So you heard me talking about the end of the world?'

'What if I did? You Assassins talk about that sort of thing all the time. You're all very theatrical.' Daniel's tone was mocking, but he still wasn't dialing, and Desmond spied a flicker of curiosity in his eyes.

'I wasn't just speaking figuratively,' Desmond pressed on, risking a few steps to take him closer to Daniel. 'I meant the real thing. Fire and brimstone and the eradication of all life on the planet. It's real, Daniel, and it's coming. Soon.'

'He's right,' Clay broke in, moving to Desmond's side. 'I've seen it, inside the Animus. It's happened before and it's going to happen again. I can show you. I ... I hid the memories, the truth, when I first discovered it. I wanted to keep the knowledge out of Vidic's hands but if you come with us then you'll see, and you might even be able to help. You're an Assassin, aren't you?'

'No,' Daniel replied in a hard voice. 'I was never an Assassin. I just played one for a while.'  He looked down at his cell phone and began dialing. 'Thanks for filling me in, though. All that stuff about fire and brimstone sounds _very_ exciting. I'm sure Alan Rikkin will be interested to hear it.'

He spoke briefly on the phone in fluent Russian, keeping the gun casually trained on Desmond and Clay in order to curb any attempt at fleeing despite the threats. Barely three minutes must have passed when a long, black car with tinted windows reversed smoothly into the alley and two Templar guards climbed out of the front seats and nodded deferentially to Daniel.

'Cuff them,' he said, by way of greeting. 'These two are wrigglers. Don't be afraid to cut off their circulation.' 

They were thrown mercilessly against the side of the car, arms pulled back roughly, and tough plastic zip ties were tightened around their wrists. Desmond looked over at Clay, hoping to catch his eye and silently communicate some kind of escape plan, but his partner had his eyes tightly shut and his lips pressed together, the obvious strain of remaining in the present visible on his face. Desmond swore internally and rushed through a dozen different strategies in his brain, trying to figure out what Ezio would do in this kind of situation. He was still thinking when a hand pressed firmly down onto his head, forcing him to duck into the car.

The rear section had two sets of seats, facing each other. Clay and Desmond were pushed into one set and Daniel positioned himself in the middle of the other two. The engine hummed to life.

'Seatbelts,' Clay said in a brittle voice.

'What's that, Girl Interrupted?'

Clay opened his eyes and glared at Daniel. 'You should put our seatbelts on. If we get into an accident I don't think your boss will be too happy when our heads get cracked open.'

'Bit late to start worrying about damaging _your_ brain, Kaczmarek. Go on then. Never let it be said that I neglect health and safety.'

As the car pulled out of the alleyway and began its journey out of St Petersburg, Daniel leaned across and gripped Clay's seatbelt, pulling it down and over his lap before finally clipping it in place. He did the same for Desmond, who waited until Daniel was very close before jerking his knee up violently, trying to land a kick in a sensitive area. Daniel responded by slamming a clenched fist down hard onto Desmond's thigh, immediately deadening the whole area, then calmly completing the process he'd been engaged in. Satisfied that they were both strapped in, Daniel sat back in his seat with no indication that any kind of struggle had taken place.

They travelled in silence for some time. Desmond's arms and back soon began to ache from the way that his bound hands were held behind him and pressed into the seat back. He pulled against the zip tie but only succeeded in chafing his wrists until the freshly exposed layers of his skin stung.

As they left the main city and set out on the final stretch of road towards the airport, Desmond glanced over at Clay, who was leaning his head against the cool glass of the window and watching the landscape roll by. He felt a sudden flash of guilt that he had broken Clay out of the mental hospital only to get him violently recaptured again.

'What happens to Clay now?' he asked Daniel.

Their captor had been calmly sending a text, but he looked up at the sound of Desmond's voice, meeting his eyes for a moment before turning his gaze to Clay. 'He'll be brought back to Abstergo, with you.'

'But you don't need him. Can't you take him back to the hospital? He still needs treatment.'

Clay closed his eyes.

'We _thought_ we didn't need him,' Daniel replied. 'Then you guys went out of your way to break him out. That made him interesting to us again.'

It had been precisely what Desmond hadn't wanted to hear. He lowered his head and then looked over, trying to catch Clay's eye. 'Hey,' he said softly, though he knew that Daniel would hear anyway. 'I'll get you out of this, I promise.'

Clay didn't look away from the window, but a smile played over his lips. 'You won't have to.'

Desmond's lips had barely shaped the start of a question before the world suddenly jerked away, leaving his head and internal organs flailing to catch up. They were spinning, spinning, and there was broken glass flying everywhere and cutting into his skin like a thousand small swords. He heard yelling from the front seats, but could not see anything as he had clenched his eyes shut in a desperate attempt to shield them from the slivers of glass. The spinning came to an end as they slammed up against something hard and the vehicle groaned and creaked and then tipped, falling onto its side and wobbling for a moment before finally collapsing onto its roof.

Desmond hung from his seatbelt, his ears ringing. He blacked out for a few seconds, but was brought back to reality by the sounds of shouts and gunshots. He blinked away the blurriness in his vision and saw Daniel rolling onto his stomach and then crawling out through the empty window, drawing his gun as he did so. There was one final gunshot, followed by the sound of a struggle, and then relative silence fell. Desmond feebly tried to extricate himself from his cuffs or his seatbelt, stopping when a wave of agony spread through his left shoulder. His head was bent at an awkward angle against the crushed roof and he couldn't see Clay, and couldn't muster the strength to call out and ask if he was OK.

Desmond stared groggily into the light that was seeping into the wrecked car from the space where the window had once been. Shadows fell across it, and just before he lost consciousness he saw Rebecca's face and heard her calling out to him.

'Nice rescue,' Desmond muttered. Then he passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to pileonmiles, who has agreed to beta this story. :-)


	7. Chapter 7

**October 20th 2012**  

 

For the second time in a week, Daniel woke up with a pounding headache and an as-yet undefined sense of dread. He took several deep breaths in an attempt to force additional oxygen into his blood and tried to blink away the bleariness in his vision. The first things that he saw were his own feet, each bound with copious amounts of rope to the legs of a wooden chair. His arms were nowhere in sight, and it took a moment for his foggy brain to work out that they were bent awkwardly around the back of the chair and fastened together. He got the impression that he was in pain, but his nerve endings seemed to be dulled and his tongue felt thick and dry. He scraped it experimentally against the roof of his mouth, noting the roughness of the motion, and tried to piece everything together.

The headache could be caused by an injury or by dehydration, but was most likely a mixture of both. The numbness and confused thinking could also be attributed to either of this factors, but Daniel was intimately familiar with the sensation of being drugged and he could tell that there were the remains of a sedative coursing through his veins, at least six hours old.

He needed to figure out what had happened, so he backtracked to the last thing that he definitely remembered, which was calling for the car in the alley, and moved forward from there in his mind. The two Assassins had been cuffed and put in the car, and then Kaczmarek had...

'Would you like some water?'

Daniel tried to look up sharply, failed with a grunt of pain as the action plucked at his aching neck muscles, and then attempted the move again with more care. Blinking to clear his vision, he saw that he was in a bare, boxy room with grey stone walls, and seated on a chair in front of him was Clay Kaczmarek.

'W-' Daniel began, and paused to try and work some saliva into his throat. 'Water?'

'Yes, water. Would you like some?'

Now that his eyesight was a little clearer, Daniel saw that Clay was sporting a bandage over his temple, and that his face was littered with at least a dozen small cuts. His left arm was in a sling, though the arm itself was not in any kind of cast. A dislocated shoulder seemed the most likely cause for it. He was smiling, but not in a pleasant way.

More to the point, however, were his words - for Daniel realised that he _would_ very much like some water. In fact, he'd probably amputate a couple of his own toes for even a cup of the stuff to soothe his parched mouth and throat. 'Yeah,' he replied at last, his voice sounding like that of an eighty year old man who had smoked three packs of cigarettes every day since birth. 'Yeah, I'd like some water.'

Clay nodded thoughtfully, but didn't move. Daniel gritted his teeth.

'I mean, some water would be good right about _now_.'

Clay cocked his head to one side and said, in an almost pitying voice, 'I don't have any water.'

'Then why the hell would you...?'

'Just wanted to put the idea in your head.'

Daniel stared for a moment and then huffed out a painful laugh. 'Damn. You were such a nice kid when we found you.'

'I'm surprised you even remember.'

Daniel remembered. Most of his work outside of raids and infiltrations had been for Abstergo's Lineage and Research Acquisition department: namely, tracking down living descendants of prominent Assassins or those with "useful" genetic memories and obtaining them for use by Warren Vidic and his team. His assignment to Desmond Miles' case had been for the LRA, and two years prior he had been tasked with finding a descendant of, among other high-profile figures, the infamous 'prophet' Ezio Auditore da Firenze. 

The Assassin in question had originally shown up on their radars after he somehow managed to infiltrate Abstergo's headquarters and break into the office of Alan Rikkin himself, stealing a number of important files related to the Animus project. The kind of skill required to carry out such an operation had impressed Warren Vidic, almost as much as the operation itself had infuriated him, and after investigating Kaczmarek's ancestry he'd instructed Daniel to "track that little bastard down and drag him back here".

'It bothered me,' Daniel revealed. 'It bothered me that you were so easy to find, so easy to capture.'

The chase had almost been disappointing. The guy had been in his apartment, for God's sake. He'd actually been asleep when Daniel and his team burst in, and as they dragged him out onto the streets, half-dressed and shivering in the cold February dawn, he'd simply said, "Please don't hurt me, I'll do whatever you want, I swear, don't hurt me" in a frightened, honest voice. He hadn't struggled or fought at all on the long journey to Italy, instead remaining mute unless spoken to and staring out of the window whenever one was available.

It had felt _wrong_. Daniel must have helped to track and capture a dozen Assassins by that point, and not one of them had gone down without a fight. He'd heard the stories about Auditore, and the rumours of Kaczmarek's break-in, and had been gearing himself up for a proper chase with a thrilling battle at the end of it. The easy surrender had left a bad taste in his mouth.

This new Clay Kaczmarek, however, looked a lot more promising. There was something dark and broken and manic behind his eyes, a jitteriness to his stare which implied that he was seeing multiple versions of reality and gripping the steering wheel tight to stay focused on the correct one. He had the look of a dog deciding whether or not to bite the hand reaching towards it. Daniel would call him improved, though he knew that few would agree.

Accepting that water was off the menu, Daniel tried angling for information. 'What happened?' he asked. 'I remember being in the car, but things get a bit fuzzy after that.'

'Bill and the team were following you. They managed to intercept you at a crossroads. They intercepted you pretty hard, in fact. There's a nasty dent in the front of the van now.'

'The driver, and the other guard?'

'Dead.'

'Right.' It was all coming back to him now, in bits and pieces. Daniel drew his brows together in concentration. 'I shot someone,' he remembered abruptly.

'Shaun.'

'Did I kill him?'

'No. He's going to be fine.'

'Shit.' Daniel pulled a face. 'That's embarrassing. Taken captive without a single casualty. How did Bill Miles find us, anyway?'

'Desmond has an implant.'

Now that _was_ embarrassing. Daniel had even overheard the two of them talking about some kind of implant, but he'd been negotiating his way around a fifty foot drop at the time and had been too distracted to analyse the conversation. Now that his clarity of thought was returning, however, he was beginning to get an idea of the kind of welcome he would face upon his return to Abstergo. He'd been given two "second chance" missions and failed both of them miserably. He'd probably be stuck doing paperwork for the rest of his career, Rikkin having decided that even speech-giving was too difficult a task. What inspiration could the new recruits find in an habitual fuck-up?

'So,' he said, trying to stave off such thoughts. 'Why are you here, Kaczmarek? You on guard duty?'

Clay shook his head. 'No, they don't trust me with guard duty. I'm crazy, remember? The others don't know I'm here.'

'Why are you here?'

'I came here to kill you.'

Daniel experienced an odd sensation, as though his entire body had been put on pause. Clay continued.

'I waited for a time when I knew the sedatives would be wearing off. I wanted you to be awake when it happened. I wanted ... I don't know. Vengeance, maybe.'

'You wanted to take those two years out of my hide?'

'Something like that.'

'So why haven't you?'

Clay stared at him for a long time before he answered. 'When I got here, I stopped at the door for a second. To psych myself up to it, you know. And I looked over, I looked down the corridor, and I saw Bill Miles, and he saw me. He stopped, just for a second, then he moved quickly out of sight.' Clay bared his teeth. 'He saw me, and he knew why I was here and what I was planning to do, and he _left_. See, Rebecca managed to get the Shard off you and knock you out, and then she sort of stood over you insisting that we should try to question you, that we couldn't just kill you while you were sleeping. Not very noble, see. So we brought you back here with us. But Bill doesn't want you here. He wishes that you'd been killed in the car crash. He doesn't want to have to deal with you. You're an unnecessary burden that he can't get rid of without losing face. But...' His let the sentence hang, waiting for Daniel to catch up.

It took a few seconds, but he did. 'But if you break in here and kill me then Bill's problem gets solved, and he didn't even have to lift a finger.'

'Exactly. They can all stand around over your corpse feigning regret and saying how they should have kept a closer watch on the crazy guy, but no one will mourn you. Bill Miles gets his obstacle removed, and it's all nice and clean and simple.' That smile was back, the smile that was devoid of happiness but full to the brim with sick humours. 'Do you know that it was Bill who organised my kidnapping? Told me it would all be fine, that they would get me out as soon as I got my hands on the information.'

Daniel woke up a little more at that. 'Of course,' he said. 'That's why you didn't fight.'

Clay didn't seem to be listening. 'I'm not going to kill you, Daniel,' he said, speaking quickly now, as though he'd just heard the ticking of a bomb. 'I'm not going to kill you just because Bill Miles wants me to. That's what they all want - these leaders, these _old men_. Miles, Vidic, Rikkin. They want us all to kill each other so that their lives will be easier. They dress it up in doctrine and rhetoric and pretty words and turn the whole thing into this grand fucking narrative with Templars against Assassins in a war as old as time, but we're nothing but pawns to them, Daniel. We're pieces on the board in someone else's game of chess.' He laughed shakily, delighted by his own analogy. '"Move the lunatic two spaces to B4 so that he can take out the Master Templar and _check_." 

'Well fuck that. I won't die for them. I won't kill for them. Not any more.'

Daniel thought this over while Clay caught his breath. Finally he asked, 'You know, if you really want to piss Bill off, you should let me go.'

Clay grinned. 'I'm not _that_ crazy.' 

* * *

'My life flashed before my eyes. It was terrifying, yet at the same time strangely liberating. I feel like a man who has looked Death himself in the face and said "no, not today!"'

'Oh yeah, man. You were in some really big trouble. I feel your pain.'

Shaun glared over suspiciously at Desmond, whose voice was still a little muffled by a fat lip and whose stitches and dressings were being checked over by Rebecca. Drawing himself up to his full height, and then wincing as the movement tugged the bullet graze on his right bicep, the historian snapped back, 'It's not a _competition_ , Desmond.'

'But if it was, I'm pretty sure Desmond and Clay would be lifting the trophy between them,' Rebecca commented, swiping antiseptic over a long, deep cut on Desmond's forehead. 'At least, they would if either of them were in a state to do heavy lifting.'

'I'm sorry, Rebecca. Was my near-death experience not dramatic enough for you?'

'I think that maybe it was the shot in the arm you needed,' Rebecca replied, making no effort to disguise her grin.

'O-ho. Yes, I see what you did there. Very witty.'

Bill entered the room, the Shard of Eden held by its broken chain in his hand. He, Shaun and Rebecca had walked away from the car crash relatively intact, the Templar's fancy modern car being no match for the sturdy tank of the Assassins' van. The front windshield had splintered badly when they rammed into the car's bonnet, which had made driving to the safe house something of a challenge. They were currently holed up in a large but slightly run-down building on the outskirts of a fishing village about twenty miles up the coast from St Petersburg. There were beds and an emergency stash of food, but there was also a layer of dust over the place and the Assassin team who were supposed to have been camped out there were gone. It hadn't been a pleasant welcome.

'You're all done. Just don't do too much jumping around for the next couple of days and you should heal up OK,' Rebecca assured Desmond, packing away the first aid kit. To Bill she said, 'How are things going with our latest artefact?'

'I've been testing it out,' Bill explained. 'It's very interesting. I assumed at first that the shield would only resist metal objects, but it seems that it's actually capable of repelling anything that qualifies as a threat. Slow-moving objects are permitted to pass through the barrier, but anything above a certain velocity gets thrown back. More important than that, however, is this particular feature.' 

Bill pulled a lighter out of his pocket, flicked the lid off and then sparked up a flame. He then moved the flame close to the Shard (Shaun made a small protesting noise of indignation at this threat to a valuable piece of history) and demonstrated how the fire flattened and bent around the piece of golden metal, never quite touching it. Closing the Piece of Eden inside his fist, Bill then brought the lighter towards his own skin, whereupon the flame cringed away before being extinguished entirely.

'Holy wow,' Rebecca breathed. 'It resists extreme temperatures. That would explain why some of the First Civs managed to survive the original solar flares. If they managed to get their hands on a Shard, they could have used it to shield themselves.'

Desmond ran this over in his head and looked up suddenly at his father, heartrate quickening. 'What's the range of this thing? Could we use it to...'

'To shield the entire planet?' Shaun interrupted witheringly. 'It would be like trying to hold back an ocean with a cocktail umbrella.'

'He has a point, Shaun,' Rebecca said. 'Now that we have the basic principle, all we would need to do is amplify the effects...'

'Oh, is that all we would need to do, Rebecca? Just amplify the effects of a single magic amulet to account for an entire planet. Great, you figure out how to do that and I'll rustle up some hot chocolate.'

'But we already know how to do it!' Desmond said excitedly. 'At least, we know it's possible.' He raised his eyebrows meaningfully at Rebecca.

'Right,' she said, immediately latching onto the same idea as Desmond. 'Of course, Eye Abstergo! The Templars worked out a way to duplicate the effects of the Apple on a global scale by placing it in a satellite and broadcasting the signal. It was all ready to launch until their Piece of Eden was destroyed.'

'Oh my God,' Shaun said slowly, looking up at Desmond in amazement as if unable to credit that he'd managed to think of it first. 'That could actually work. Assuming they tuned their technology to be compatible with the energy produced by the Pieces of Eden, they could use the same principle to project the Shard's protection.' 

'There's just one problem with that plan,' Bill cut in. He'd been wearing an increasingly dark expression as the conversation progressed. 'The Assassins don't have anywhere near the resources required to build and launch a satellite like that, even if we somehow managed to get our hands on the plans for it. Certainly not in under two months.'

Desmond bit his lip and braced himself before speaking. 'We don't have to build our own satellite,' he pointed out. 'The satellite already exists.'

Bill scoffed. 'Are you suggesting that we somehow break into the launch facility, figure out how to correctly place the Shard within the satellite and make the necessary adjustments, then launch the thing before Abstergo's private army of guards tears us all to shreds?' 

'No,' Desmond replied stubbornly, looking his father in the eye. 'That wasn't what I was suggesting.'

A silence fell over the group as each of them processed Desmond's unspoken suggestion. Rebecca glanced over at Shaun, who was running a hand through his hair and looking deeply troubled. Bill, however, was shaking his head emphatically. 

'No. _No_. We just found the Shard, and you want us to hand it over to the Templars? That's insane. As if they didn't have enough power already!'

'What if we told them about the solar flares?' Desmond persisted, standing up from where he had been perched on the edge of the table. 'We have the evidence to prove it. We could send them the logs from the Animus, the warnings from Those Who Came Before, the memory that Clay uncovered!'

'What's to say they don't already know?' Bill countered harshly. 'Maybe they were planning to hide underground and let the world burn. It would be a fresh start for them, allowing them to design a New World according to their own philosophy.'

'That doesn't make any sense! Why would they plan to launch a global mind control device if they knew that everyone was just going to die anyway? Besides, Minerva and the others went out of their way to make sure that the Templars were kept in the dark.'

'And why do you think that was?' Bill snapped. 'Their plans deliberately excluded the Templars. They had another plan, Desmond, and I think that _you_ know what it is!'

Desmond clenched his jaw. He hadn't told his father about Juno showing him the location of the Grand Temple. He felt, deep in his gut, an instinct telling him that going there would be wrong, but he also knew that it was what Bill would want to do. His only option was to feign ignorance as to Juno's plans, but he had never been particularly good at concealing things. He'd been asked, as soon as he woke up after the car crash, what the goddess had said to him. He'd said, "Nothing important," but had been unable to maintain eye contact whilst speaking, and so Bill had immediately known that he was lying.

'What are you hiding, Desmond?' Bill pressed on, frustration clear in his voice. 'If there's already some kind of plan in place to stop the solar flares, then we need to use it.'

'I told you, I don't know anything. But even if I did, I wouldn't trust them. In case you've forgotten, their plans didn't really work out last time. Besides, you saw how Adam and Eve ran from them, that weird factory that they ran through. It looked to me like the First Civs were no better than slaves, and you want to put our fate in the hands of their masters?'

'We don't have a choice.'

'Yes, we do!'

'We are _not_ working with the Templars, Desmond! I refuse to hand them another weapon.'

'The entire world is about be destroyed, for fuck's sake, can't you put aside your petty differences for one second...?'

'Petty?' Bill interrupted, his eyes blazing, and Desmond realised that he might have gone too far. 'These people and their organisation have slain thousands upon thousands of men and women...'

'Sounds like another organisation I know.'

'They believe that liberty and free will are obstacles to progress, Desmond.' Bill took a couple of steps closer to his defiant son. 'You think that Those Who Came Before might have dangerous motives? We know that the Templars do. Whose side are you on, Desmond?'

Desmond was about to retort that he was on whatever side allowed the human race to survive, but he realised that it was pointless. He'd had this argument with his father before. Alright, perhaps not this specific argument, but he'd had a hundred more like it and they all ended the same way. He turned to the other two for support. 'Alright, let's vote on it. What do you two think?'

Shaun and Rebecca looked a bit alarmed at being put on the spot. Unsurprisingly, Shaun was the first to speak. 'Well, I ... We've come this far by following these messages from Those Who Came Before. I can't say I believe in the whole fate angle, but we've seen first-hand how advanced their technology was. If anyone knows how to stop the solar flares, I imagine that they would.' He sat back, visibly relieved at having stated his own position and looking pointedly at Rebecca.

She had been staring at the floor thoughfully, and continued to do so for a few long seconds before finally looking up. 'I think we should at least contact Abstergo. Explain the situation to them and see if they'd be open to a temporary alliance. I know our ideologies are kind of incompatible but I'm pretty sure we can all get behind the idea of not burning to death. Besides, the Shard isn't nearly as powerful as the Apple, not in a destructive sense. It was designed for defensive purposes. Of all the artefacts that the Templars already have their hands on, it would probably be the least useful to them in a world-conquering sense.' She noticed the way that Bill was staring at her disbelievingly and shrugged her shoulders. 'Sorry, Bill, but I think Desmond's right. We have to try anything that might work.'

The silence stretched out uncomfortably. Two of them were for the idea, and two of them against it. Technically, Bill could pull rank and forbid any communication with the Templars, but in a sense their true leader was not Bill but Desmond. He had apparently been chosen by Those Who Came Before as the saviour of the world, and he was the only one among them capable of properly using the Pieces of Eden. Bill could command all he wished, but if Desmond refused then there was little to be done.

'Alright,' Bill said heavily. 'But we still have the challenge of actually contacting the Templars in the first place. I don't exactly have Alan Rikkin on speed-dial.'

'Maybe not,' Desmond said with a small grin. 'But I know someone who probably does.'


	8. Chapter 8

**8th July 2012**

He has been through hell and come out fractured and tattered and barely recognisable as the man he once was. He is not longer even sure of who that man might have been: there are dozens now. He has gone back, all the way back, daring himself to go farther each time and finally he has arrived here, with them, in this place.

She shows him the Apple, her head tilted curiously. She tells him to touch it. He does not want to, but _he_ does, and he is the stronger of the two of them. His hand rests on the singing metal. The message comes and it is terrible.

He protests. He refuses. He has come all this way and torn himself apart in the belief that he is somehow special.

He is not. He is a message-bearer: a courier for the Truth. A tool.

He can already feel Desmond Miles' foot stepping on his back.

She leans upon his mind and pries it open, forcing the Truth into him, and he relents. He agrees. He will deliver the message.

Then he will be allowed to die.

* * *

**21st October 2012**

The two back legs of the chair scraped against the wooden floor and Desmond grunted in exertion as he dragged it along. It must have looked a strange sight: Desmond in front, walking backwards; Daniel still seated and tied up and looking exasperated at the treatment; Rebecca following the two of them at a safe distance with a taser gun armed and pointed at the captive Templar, wearing a deadly serious expression on her usually cheerful face.

'I can walk, you know,' Daniel called over his shoulder as they neared the main meeting room.

'Wouldn't hear of it,' Desmond panted. 'Here at _Chateau Assassin_ you get the five star treatment. Chauffered to every destination.'

'He's right. By the way, this thing is aimed at your balls right now. Just in case you were thinking of trying to break out,' Rebecca added.

Daniel smirked suggestively at her and growled, 'You keep talking dirty to me like that and I won't need the taser to get warmed up.'

Desmond caught Rebecca's eye and grinned before abruptly letting go of the chair. Daniel yelped in alarm as it tipped backwards over its pivot point and he toppled to the ground, only to find himself caught milliseconds before impact.

'Whoops,' Desmond said innocently. 'Nearly dropped you there.'

'Desmond, are you defending my honour?' Rebecca asked in a mock-disapproving tone as Daniel tried to catch his breath.

'Of course not. You're carrying fifty thousands volts of electricity. I'm pretty sure you're capable of defending your own honour.'

'Quit horsing around,' Bill said darkly, appearing in the doorway to watch their arrival. 'And don't take your eyes off him.' He put a particular emphasis of distaste on the last word, as though we would have preferred to call Daniel an "it" and was being generous by gracing him with such a humanising pronoun.

Desmond rolled his eyes and dragged Daniel's chair over to the bank of computers where Shaun was waiting, depositing him just out of arm's reach. The historian folded his arms and glared down at the Templar.

'Ah, look who's graced us with his presence. Not so tough without your gun, are you?'

Daniel adopted a contrite expression. 'I'm sorry for shooting you in the arm,' he said seriously.

'Oh, really?'

'Really. I'll be sure to aim better next time.'

They were all assembled, ready for the call to Rikkin. Clay was hanging back, seated on a tableand staring blankly ahead in a way that made it unclear whether he knew what was going on or whether he was simply in the midst of living out another timeline. Shaun and Rebecca had everything set up to make a video call to Rikkin's office, but the security software would require a facial ID match for Daniel before allowing the call to go through, and Desmond had argued that Rikkin might be more inclined to listen if he saw his man being held hostage.

Bill had been sceptical. He still hated this idea. But Desmond had talked him around. This had to be the right thing to do. What other choices did they have?

'Is he in position?' Bill asked briskly.

'Yeah, he's all set up,' Rebecca replied, making a final adjustment to the webcam.

'OK. I'll talk to Rikkin,' Desmond said. 'I want the rest of you to stay off-camera and stay quiet. I'm not sure how much the Templars know about who's on this team, but if I can convince Rikkin that I'm working alone then it might make you guys less of a target for him. And _you_.' He stepped forward and threaded his fingers into Daniel's hair, gripping it tightly and twisting his head to the side so that they were eye-to-eye. 'If you want to make it out of here alive, you keep your mouth shut. Understood?'

Daniel grimaced and bucked his head defiantly, and in response Desmond twisted his wrist a little until the tip of his hidden blade was pressing lightly into the side of Daniel's skull. The Templar fell still, but his pale blue eyes were burning with anger. Despite the fact that Daniel was tied up, helpless, and unarmed, Desmond couldn't help but feel a stirring of fear as he looked into those eyes, and wondered how many deaths had been reflected in them, and whether Daniel cared at all for the people he had killed. He looked away and used his grip on Daniel's head to make the captive look directly forward, into the lens of the camera.

'Make the call, Rebecca.'

The large screen in front of Desmond came to life as Rebecca pushed a button on the keyboard and hurriedly ducked off to one side. After a short pause they were connected to Abstergo, and the security program flashed up and began analysing the webcam picture.

'Smile, asshole,' Desmond hissed.

Daniel didn't reply.

'Identity confirmed: Daniel Cross. Connecting you to Alan Rikkin,' came a cold robotic voice from the computer.

Desmond took a deep breath and arranged his face into a neutral expression as he watched the pinwheel turning on the screen. The seconds ticked by and Desmond was almost starting to wonder if the connection had failed when the screen changed suddenly and Desmond himself face-to-face with Alan Rikkin.

He was younger than Vidic, but not by much. His hair was cropped short and either dark brown or grey - it was difficult to tell from the video feed. His face was curiously rounded and at a glance he might have looked like a friendly elementary school teacher, until you looked a little closer and saw the bored coolness in his gaze. He raised an eyebrow at the sight of Daniel trussed up and Desmond standing over him, but didn't look particularly devastated.

'Miles,' he said curtly. 'What do you want?'

'Hello to you too.'

'Don't fuck me about, I'm a busy man. Did you really call me up just so you could kill Daniel in front of me? Or are you going to demand some kind of ransom?' Scorn dripped from his words,

'None of the above,' Desmond replied, releasing Daniel and taking a step towards the screen. 'I want to make a deal.'

Rikkin contemplated this for a second, before replying, 'What could you possibly offer me that I can't simply take from you when my men track you down? And they will track you down, Miles. You and your teammates, who you've no doubt instructed to keep out of sight. Let's see, Shaun Hastings, Rebecca Crane, Clay Kaczmarek and William Miles ... Is that everyone?'

Not for the first time, Desmond wished that he had a better poker face. He glanced over at Shaun and Rebecca, who were looking a little freaked out at hearing the most powerful Templar in the world speak their names. He tried to nod reassuringly at them before looking back at Rikkin and saying, 'They're not onscreen because they're not relevant right now. This is between you and me, Rikkin. And since you ask, I do have something that you can't take by force. Information.'

Rikkin smirked. 'You underestimate us, Miles. We have many ways of extracting information by force.'

Desmond decided he'd had enough of this volley of threats. It might not be a good negotiating strategy, but he wanted to get on with this and so he decided to lay everything out on the table. 'In two months the world and everything living on it will be destroyed. There is only one way to stop this from happening. I have one key, you have the other.' In a calm, slow voice, he explained everything that they knew about the solar flares, and about the Shard, and how Eye Abstergo might be used to save the planet. He stepped up to the computer and transmitted the Animus logs that Clay had found: the warnings from Those Who Came Before and the visions of the First Civilisation.

Rikkin didn't speak, save for the occasional question to prompt Desmond along. He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully when the story was finished, but didn't speak. Desmond shifted from one foot the the other impatiently, wondering if there was something that he had left out.

'I've sent you the evidence. If you look it over...'

'I've no doubt it will back up your story. You wouldn't take a risk like this or make an offer like the one you have if you didn't have hard proof. We already had pieces of this information, anyway, though we weren't aware that it was as ... serious as this.'

'So?' Desmond felt like his entire body was clenched up into a tight ball of nerves.

Rikkin looked directly into his camera's lens and said, 'I accept your offer.'

Desmond released a slow breath. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his father drop his head and shake it in despair.

'With a couple of minor amendments, of course,' Rikkin added.

'What?' Desmond demanded, his anger and fear returning. 'What the hell are you talking about? I just told you that every person on this planet is going to die if you don't...'

'Not every person. We are in control of a large number of underground bunkers, enough facilities globally to shelter most if not all of the Templar order and their families. More than enough to sustain and rebuild human life. In fact, a population of around a million or two would be far easier to manage than the seven billion we're trying to cope with right now.'

Desmond gritted his teeth. 'You're bluffing. You _can't_ be that cold.'

'Yes, he can,' Bill cut in from the sidelines, in a bitterly triumphant tone. 'I tried to tell you, Desmond. They're monsters. They don't care about human life.'

'Won't you even hear me out?' Rikkin asked, folding his arms and raising an eyebrow patronisingly.

'Fine, what else do you want, goddamnit?' Desmond snapped.

'Not much. You can release Daniel back to us, for a start.'

Daniel looked up, surprise written clearly all over his face. He'd obviously assumed that Rikkin no longer cared if he lived or died. Desmond stared at Daniel for a moment and realised that in some sick, twisted way, he actually cared too. He had spared the man's life so many times now that he was beginning to wonder if he would ever be able to kill him. After all, what would be the point of that mercy if things ended with Daniel dying at Desmond's hand anyway? He tried to shake the thought free and looked back up at Rikkin.

'Alright, I'll think about that one.' He held out a hand to placate Bill, who had opened his mouth in disbelief and anger. 'What else?'

'Well now,' Rikkin appeared to be in a much more agreeable mood now that he had the upper hand in the proceedings. 'Making all those adjustments and sending that satellite up is going to cost us a great deal, and so far you've offered me no real incentive other than altruism. So let's throw in the Apple of Eden as well.'

'What?'

'No.' Bill took several steps towards the computer. 'He's wasting our time. I'm ending this.'

'Well, is that William Miles I see?' Rikkin jeered softly. 'Are you really so quick to condemn the world to burn, William?'

'I'd rather watch it burn than let _you_ get your hands on it!' Bill snarled back.

A brief, choking silence fell over the gathered Assassins at those words. Rebecca's eyes widened and she gaped at Bill as if uncertain what she had just heard. Desmond, too, stared at his father and found him unrecognisable for a few brief seconds: he was insane with anger, his face twisted in hatred as he glared at the man on the screen. Desmond had never particularly liked his father, but he had never feared him as much as he did right then.

'Jesus, Dad,' he said, for lack of anything else to say.

Bill hesitated and looked back at his son, and his face softened for a moment as he visibly reined his emotions back in. Swallowing hard, he turned back to the screen. 'Is that your final offer, Rikkin?' he asked hoarsely. 'You won't consider taking just the Shard?'

'How about just the Shard and Daniel?' Desmond haggled desperately.

Rikkin shook his head, almost pityingly. 'You have my offer. I suggest you take it. You don't have much choice, after all.'

'You're wrong,' Bill replied, walking over to his desk, opening a drawer, and discreetly pulling something out of it before walking back into the web camera's view.

Desmond didn't see the gun until Bill already had it pressed against Daniel's head. The helpless Templar screwed his eyes tightly shut as he braced himself for the shot.

'Consider this our rejection of your offer,' Bill stated coldly.

' _No!_ '

Desmond had started moving before Bill even finished speaking, or Daniel's shining career as a Master Templar and mass murderer might have ended right there, with his brains splattered over the walls and floor of a dirty, broken-down house in his home country. As it was, Desmond slammed a hand upwards into his father's arm and Bill cried out in pain as the bullet thudded into the ceiling, causing a small shower of plaster.

'Rebecca, cut the fucking call!' Desmond yelled over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off his father. Their faces were mere inches apart and each could see the other's expression very clearly: the old resentments and friction crystallised into this moment. Desmond did not ask his father to hand over the gun. He simply tightened his fingers over Bill's wrist until his fingers went limp and Desmond could pull the firearm away harmlessly.

'Connection's been cut,' Rebecca told him, her voice shaking a little.

'Good.' Desmond released his father and fumbled with the gun a little as he tried to figure out how to release the magazine. He had never received arms training when he was growing up, since firing guns in the Black Hills was a bad habit when you were trying to lay low, and so the pistol was fairly alien to him. He eventually found the correct mechanism and the case of bullets slid harmlessly out of the weapon. He pocketed them and tossed the gun aside distastefully. 'Alright,' he said, the words sticky in his dry mouth. 'Can we please make an agreement that we'll at least talk it over as a group before we start _shooting people_?'

'I'll second that,' Shaun said quickly. He looked slightly green, as though the sound of the gunshot had caused him to experience unpleasant flashbacks.

'Why do you keep defending him?' Bill demanded, pointing a finger at Daniel like some figure in an Old Testament painting.

'Gotta say, I'm kind of curious to know as well,' Daniel muttered, keeping his head bent but glancing up at Desmond through his eyelashes.

'We're Assassins,' Desmond said stubbornly, feeling his face heat up in a mixture of shame and defiance. 'As far as I'm concerned, shooting someone who's helpless and tied to a chair isn't an assassination. It's just murder, and cowardly murder at that.'

'If you'd seen what I'd seen, you might reconsider,' Bill said, his voice quiet now. 'If you'd seen the bodies after Cross had finished with them, you wouldn't be so quick to defend him. If you had known the people he killed...' He looked up. 'Actually, you _did_. Didn't you ever wonder what happened to the Farm, Desmond? Do you know where they are, the kids that you grew up with?'

Desmond wavered, suddenly shaken by the implication of the words. 'It doesn't matter...'

'It was razed to the ground,' Bill pressed on in the same deadened tone. 'Your mother and I got out, so did about half a dozen others. That was my first real encounter with Cross after he left us. He lined them up - the unlucky ones, the ones who didn't escape. We were watching from the treeline, trying to figure out a way to rescue them. Cross told us to to surrender, and when we didn't show ourselves he had them shot. Men and women, some of them not yet out of their teens, Desmond. You remember Tom?'

Desmond did. Jesus, he remembered now. He'd always sparred with Tom, because they were about the same build despite the fact that Tom was a couple of years younger. He'd resented the other kid at first, but Tom had a habit of cracking so many stupid jokes as they fought that Desmond had warmed to him. They'd drifted apart, later, when Tom had bought into the Assassin's belief system and Desmond had rejected it, but they'd always remained friendly...

'He was the last of them, and he cried out for his mother. She was with us, and she saw her son die. We had to drag her away from there.' Bill's lip curled as he looked over Daniel, who met his gaze without flinching, his expression unreadable. 'So you carry your bleeding heart for Cross. But don't you _dare_ judge me for wanting him dead.'

'Um, sorry to break up this precious family moment,' Shaun said, walking over to them whilst maintaining his distance from Daniel. 'But we need to figure out a Plan B now that the Templar thing has fallen through.' He looked worriedly at Desmond. 'It _has_ fallen through, right?'

'Of course it has,' Bill replied before Desmond had a chance to speak. 'If we give them the Apple and they launch that satellite, they'll have control of every human mind on the entire planet. We can't allow that.'

'He's right,' Desmond said heavily. 'We can't agree to their demands. We're going to have to...' His voice trailed away as he teetered on the brink of surrender.

'What, Desmond?' Rebecca asked softly, joining them in the centre of the room. 'What do we have to do?'

Desmond closed his eyes and released a slow, pained breath. 'There's another temple,' he said. 'A Grand Temple. Juno showed it to me. She said that it's the key to saving the world.'

'Where is it?' Bill asked brusquely.

'New York.'

'Then that's where we're headed.'

And in the back of the room, Clay Kaczmarek finally raised his head and stared, his fingers gripping tightly onto the edge of the table. He did not speak, as he had not spoken throughout all of this, and he suspected that the others had forgotten he was here. But he could see, and he could hear, and he could feel despair.

* * *

**8th August 2012**

This is the end.

He makes the final adjustments to the AI program and hides it away where only one person will ever be able to find it, filled with an expanding sense of relief.

The messages are in place. He is a little worried now that they might not be as clear to Desmond Miles as they seemed when he was writing them.

But under the circumstances, they were the best he could do.

He is inside the machine. This is his home now and it will deliver him to wherever he is going.

He turns, in this strange white space, and finds himself faced with one of them. The Ones Who Came Before. It is not Juno, but it doesn't matter. She is his guardian angel now: here to guide him into the arms of death. He smiles wearily at her.

She says, ' _You cannot leave yet_.'

The smile slides off his face like mud. 'No,' he whimpers. 'I've done my part...'

' _You have been tricked. You were nothing but a puppet. If you die now, you will die having made the world a worser place_.'

'No!' Denial is all he has left. 'I fixed things. I left the message...'

' _You left the wrong message_.'

It is almost too late for any of this to make a difference. He flickers, fading, and she sees it. She explains to him about her sad, mad, lost sister, who attempted to enslave humanity and will attempt to do so again. She explains about the cage that was constructed and bound irrevocably with the shield device, so that the planet cannot be saved without simultaneously being damned. She explains that he has broken himself upon the altar of the Animus for nothing. He has walked a thousand miles down the wrong path.

He falls to his knees and protests. 'It's not my job to save them. I'm not your chosen one. I'm not special. Juno told me...'

Minerva regards him, and for a brief moment he spies sympathy in her face, and even fondness. She kneels down in front of him and cups his cheek, lifting his head even as the rest of his body threatens to fall.

' _You_ ,' she breathes, and her hand is chilly and barely there. ' _You are remarkable_.'


	9. Chapter 9

**25th October 2012**

Desmond woke at around 3AM to the sound of footsteps outside his door. He listened carefully, his body tense as he wondered who might possibly be up at this time of night, but as soon as he started concentrating he realised that the footsteps had stopped. Whoever was walking around had paused right outside his door.

Their flight back to New York would be leaving later on that day. Bill had managed to get in contact with an Assassin team in Moscow, who would be joining them and travelling with them to provide extra security. The handling of Daniel Cross had slowed everything down, since Desmond had stubbornly refused to allow his execution and leaving him behind was not a possibility.

Things were tense. Daniel had been dragged back to his cell and locked away, but his presence amongst the Assassins was a pulsating point of tension that manifested in different ways for each of them. Shaun complained about having to "sleep with one eye open", despite how securely Daniel was being held, and he had been tired and even more irritable than usual. Rebecca worked hard to keep the mood light, but Desmond occasionally caught sight of her when she thought no one was looking, and he could see the strain beginning to show and the weariness in her eyes.

Perhaps it wasn't just Daniel. Perhaps it was Clay as well. A couple of hours after Desmond had revealed the location of the Grand Temple, Clay had suffered a swift and violent relapse into madness. He had slammed his way into his room, clutching at his head and yelling in a strange jigsaw of languages, before curling up on the floor and alternating between groaning and weeping. Desmond had barged in, held Clay tightly by the shoulders, and demanded to know what was wrong. No reply had come, but his presence at least seemed to have a marginally calming effect on the man and his broken mind. Since then, however, Clay had been withdrawn and moody: holding long conversations with himself in languages that none of the others could understand.

Needless to say, the atmosphere was somewhat fractious.

A floorboard creaked outside the door, breaking Desmond out of his retrospection, and he listened to the footsteps finally walking away. He considered going back to sleep, but after a moment or two realised that he was far too alert for that. Resignedly, he rolled out of bed, wincing at the cold and quickly pulling on his jeans and a very thick sweater that was his only item of clothing capable of keeping out the autumnal Russian chill. Once dressed, he padded up the hall quietly to find the person who had woken him.

The doorway to the main conference room came into view, illuminated by the moon and by a lamp in the corner of the room. The hallway, by contrast, was pitch black. This allowed Desmond to stand just shy of entering and watch his father.

Bill was sitting at the table, his elbows resting on its surface with his hands folded over each other and his chin resting upon them. He was staring across the room at the Animus, but his eyes seemed unfocused and he appeared to be lost in his thoughts. The grey in his hair shone beneath the light that was coming in through the window, and the lamp cast harsh shadows on his face that made him look older than he really was. Desmond observed him for about a minute, feeling simultaneously hypnotised and uncomfortable as the seconds stretched on and Bill did nothing - clearly lost in his own thoughts.

Finally disturbed by seeing his father sit still for so long, Desmond cleared his throat and stepped into the room. Bill jumped in alarm - knocked violently out of whatever inner monologue he'd been going through - then relaxed minutely upon recognising his son.

'You've learnt a lot from your ancestors,' he commented drily. 'I didn't even see you there.'

Desmond realised that he was being paid a compliment, and at the same time realised that he had no idea how to respond to it. He folded his arms self-consciously and took a seat at the table, opposite his father. 'How come you're awake?'

'Had to check on our guest,' Bill replied. He was obviously tired, since he couldn't even muster up a tone of distaste when mentioning Daniel. Nonetheless, Desmond shifted uncomfortably, sensing another fight on the horizon.

'Dad, I...'

'I know, I know,' Bill interrupted, raising a hand wearily. 'You've made your arguments, I don't need to hear them again. When we get to New York I'll hand him off and he'll be taken to one of our secure bases. Not that we have many of those left, thanks to him.' There followed a short silence, in which Desmond wondered if he should just get up and leave, but then Bill looked up at his son with uncharacteristic concern and asked, 'How are you holding up, Desmond?'

A number of responses flashed through Desmond's mind as he tried to recover from the shock of being asked such a question: sarcasm, anger, suspicion. Eventually he settled on honesty. 'I'm trying not to think too much about it.'

'Ah. "It" being...?'

'The end of the world. The Templars. Lucy.'

'You liked her.' It wasn't a question.

Desmond hesitated for a moment, and then sighed sadly. 'Yeah. I did. It's weird. I didn't even know her for all that long, if you think about it. Just a few weeks. But when I was at Abstergo, Lucy was all I had. Then she helped me escape, and she helped me use the Animus, and she got us out of the safe house when Vidic came looking for me and...' He clenched his jaw. 'I got used to it. I got used to having her around to lead us and show us which way to go. Now she's gone, and it turns out she was a Templar all along. So not only do I not know where we should go next, I don't know if we were _ever_ going in the right direction...' He cut himself off, knowing that he was rambling and making no sense, and let out a long sigh as he rubbed a hand over his eyes and then down his cheek. 'And I liked her,' he added miserably. 'She was kind and brave and she talked back and ... I just ... I liked her, Dad.'

'You're wondering if it was all just an act,' said Bill. 'You can't reconcile the Lucy that you liked with someone who would betray you like that.' His expression was deep and unreadable.

'Pretty much,' Desmond confirmed.

'People are complex creatures, Desmond,' Bill continued in a heavy voice. 'That's why we have to draw lines and have boundaries. Lucy might have been a nice person, and maybe she even liked you too, but she chose to betray us and that's all that matters.'

Desmond shook his head angrily. 'You left her alone for seven years. It's no surprise that she felt abandoned. Maybe...'

'It doesn't matter why she did it,' Bill interrupted firmly. 'She made a choice. In the end, our choices are all that matter.'

Desmond took a moment to think this over, before looking up and catching his father's eye. He laughed.

'What?'

'It's kind of surreal,' Desmond said. He waved his hand over the table to gesture the both of them. 'Us. Sitting here and talking about feelings. I kind of wish you'd yell at me to do something, just so I can be sure I'm not dreaming.'

He said it light-heartedly, but Bill didn't smile. 'You think I don't care about your feelings?'

'Honestly? No. We've never really done this before.'

'I've been hard on you,' Bill admitted unashamedly. 'Unfortunately, I don't plan to let up until we're out of this whole mess - there's too much at stake. But afterwards, I hope...' He cut himself short, almost nervously, before continuing. 'I'd like for us to be a family again, Desmond.'

Desmond felt sadness welling up inside him as he remembered the last few months before his kidnapping. He had felt lonely and isolated and discontent. The emotional wound where he had forcibly severed himself from his home, past, family and friends had begun to itch. He had even considered trying to get in touch with his parents again. Of course, that decision had been taken out of his hands as well.

Strengthening his resolve, Desmond responded in as calm a voice as he could manage. 'I don't know, Dad. This is going to sound kinda harsh, but let's face facts here. We never got on when I was a kid. I spent a lot of the time hating you. Then I ran away and we didn't see each other for ten years. Our relationship is really, really fucked up and it's going to take more than a game of catch and a father-son hug to fix it, you know?'

He lifted his eyes to gauge Bill's reaction. As always, he was difficult to read. A small, shrewd, cynical part of Desmond suspected that Bill had only started this conversation as an effort of manipulation: the man had begun to lose his authoritarian grip upon his son and was now belatedly attempting to force an emotional grip. On the other hand, his intentions might be pure, and he might be feeling genuinely compelled to reconnect with Desmond. Perhaps it was a mixture of the two. Desmond had no way of knowing what was in his father's mind, and after Lucy he was far too wary to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

'I see,' Bill said stiffly, but not unkindly. He lifted his chin. 'You should probably get back to bed.' He left a short, deliberate silence in the air. 'Though it's up to you, of course.'

* * *

Desmond left the room, but he did not go back to bed. He felt jittery and wired, even in his exhaustion, and the idea of being stuffed and choked and hot under blankets was distasteful to him when he was already feeling suffocated. Instead he stepped outside the house, relishing the crisp air as it struck his face and froze him around the neck and ears, and leaned against the brick wall of the house as he stared out over the messy fields of Russia. They were grey in the moonlight; at this time of year the sun would not rise for a good few hours yet.

He'd been stood there only a moment when the door opened again, and Desmond turned his head to find Clay stepping over the threshold. His eyes still held the wandering, paranoid look that they had whenever he was in one of his "bad" phases, and with no regard for the temperature he was wearing only a pair of jeans and a thin T-shirt. His feet were bare and pale with ragged toenails, and goosebumps were visible on his arms. Desmond frowned.

'Get back inside. You're going to freeze.'

Clay didn't reply at first. He stared up at the moon, which was full and bright, and hummed softly in the back of his throat for a moment before speaking. 'Beautiful, isn't she?'

'Sure, I guess.'

'Constant too. Permanent. I like that. No matter what century I'm in or whose life I'm living, the moon and the stars are always there. I can look at them without having to wonder whose eyes I'm seeing them through.'

Desmond was in no mood for this. Things were already too confused and weird for him to deal with enigmas about the universe. 'It's 2012,' he said shortly. 'And you're Clay Kaczmarek. Can't you write it down on a fucking card or something?'

Clay laughed jaggedly. Apparently unoffended, he replied, 'I tried carving it into my skin once. Didn't work.' He tapped his forehead. 'The problem's up here. Why do you think the Templars value thought control so much? People are ruled by their brains.'

'Not their hearts?'

'The heart's just a pump. Pumps don't think.' He spoke derisively, but a large shiver ran through his body like a pulse, and it became apparent that he was tightening the muscles in his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.

'Jesus Christ, _here_.' Desmond pulled the warm, thick sweater over his head and thrust it at Clay with ill grace. The cold air that hit his skin no longer felt refreshing.

Clay took the item of clothing slowly and then pulled it on, his fingers red and clumsy. Once he was wearing it, he hid his hands inside the sleeves and wrapped his arms around himself as though he were wearing a straightjacket. He was a few years older than Desmond, but right now he looked young and vulnerable and tormented, and Desmond felt his resentment dissipating despite the cold that was now seeping through to his bones.

'You looking forward to going home?' he asked, on the basis that at least it was better than talking about the weather.

'Home?'

'America, I mean. I hear you were in Italy for a while.' Desmond wavered, unsure of where this was going. 'Maybe you could see your family again when you get back.'

Clay shook his head emphatically. 'No, I don't want that. Not yet. There's too much to do.'

'But once we open the Grand Temple, and save the world...'

'Save it?' Clay chuckled bitterly through his teeth. 'You think that's Juno's plan? To save us all?'

Desmond felt an odd sensation in his stomach. It was the very familiar sensation of having held an irrational fear for a long time, and being incredibly close to having it justified. 'I...'

'She _hates_ us, Desmond! Yeah, she'll save us. She'll save us like panther storing its food in a tree branch.'

'What are you talking about?' Desmond stared into Clay's face, near violent with frustration. 'If you know something then you need to tell me!'

Clay cringed suddenly and clutched at his head. Through gritted teeth he groaned, 'It's not just a shield. It's a cage.'

'What is?'

'The Temple. There's one key. There's one lock. But you turn the key in the lock and two doors open. Oh _God_ , my head!'

A well of dread had opened up inside Desmond and was beginning to consume him. He had suspected that there was something very wrong with their current plan, and now he was on the verge of being handed evidence. He felt wretched for pushing Clay when he already seemed to be in pain, but he needed to know if they were heading into danger, and so he reached up and tugged Clay's hands away, replacing them with his own and forcing the man to look him in the eye.

'Tell me, Clay,' he said firmly. 'Tell me what you know. What happens if we go to the Grand Temple?'

Clay's eyes roved madly over his face. 'The world won't burn. The temple contains a shield device, and it will protect the planet. But Juno ... she bound herself up with it. She's stored down there, I don't know how, but if you use the Temple then she'll get out and she'll try to enslave humanity again.' He shook his head, as though angry at himself for not explaining things properly. 'No, she won't just try, she'll succeed. You have no idea how strong she is, or what she's capable of. These creatures ... they were more advanced than anything we'll ever be able to comprehend, and Juno _despises_ humanity. Imagine what she'll do to us if she gets out.'

Desmond tried to wrap his brain around this devastating news. Then he remembered who he was talking to, and made an effort not to get too far ahead of himself. 'How can you possibly know all this?' he demanded.

'Minerva,' Clay said simply. 'She showed me the Truth.' He always pronounced "truth" with an audible capitalisation. 'All of it. I can show you, too, in the Animus.'

'Yeah. No offence, but I'm going to need to hear this for myself.' Desmond's tongue felt numb, but somehow he managed to force the words out. He realised that he was still holding onto Clay's head and hurriedly dropped his arms back to his sides. As though his fingers had been carrying some kind of electrical charge, Clay's body sagged with relief so much that he appeared to lose a couple of inches in height. His own arms came around his body protectively again, his fingers worrying at the sleeves of Desmond's sweater from the inside.

Thoughts were blazing through Desmond's head, racing and fighting each other to be first to the finish line. Mixed in there was a sense of relief that his wariness of Juno had ben justified, and a fear that he would not be able to convince his father of this, and a realisation that they surely couldn't go and open the Grand Temple now. Or ... could they?

What other options did they have left?

With that question, the bubble of despair rose to the forefront of Desmond's mind and emerged to sit oily and unpleasant on the surface. As he ran through the possible paths that lay ahead he realised aloud: "We are so fucked.'

Clay's lips drew back from his teeth, which were ground tightly together. 'You're just figuring that out now?'

'If what you say is true, then what the hell am I supposed to do? I can either hand the world over to Juno, or I can hand it over to the Templars. Humanity gets enslaved either way. What kind of a choice is that?'

'There's always a third option,' Clay suggested in a low, insidious voice.

Desmond looked at him in alarm. 'You mean ... do nothing? Let the world end?'

'It's what a true Assassin would do. Freedom, above all else, remember?'

'No.' It was a relief to have one thing of which he was absolutely certain. 'That's not on the table.'

'Some people might survive. The human race might survive.'

'There is no way I'm letting seven billion people burn to death because of a philosophy that most of them don't even believe in.'

'But you're OK with letting them be enslaved?'

Desmond glared at him, confused and angry, trying to figure out why Clay was pushing the apocalyptic option so hard. Clay's eyes were bright and feverish, but his expression was disarmingly neutral. 'I would have thought that after everything you've gone through for the Assassins, you'd understand.'

'I do.' Clay smiled bitterly. 'I'm just playing devil's advocate. You know that Bill's going to argue all of this, a lot more convincingly than I have. If you can't stand up to me, how can you possibly hope to stand up to your father?'

Desmond ran this over in his head. For a long moment he was sorely tempted by the idea of simply handing the evidence over to his father, and to Shaun and Rebecca. They could discuss it as a group, and perhaps even vote on the best solution. Of course, Bill would probably be able to talk the other two round to his own point of view and, even if he didn't, he could simply use his position as leader of the team - not to mention as the current keeper of the Pieces of Eden - to dictate their next move.

What would that move be? Bill had already said that he'd rather let the world burn than hand it over to the Templars, but would his belief in the wisdom of Those Who Came Before convince him to put their fate in Juno's hands?

It suddenly became clear to Desmond that he was stalling; it was actually far easier to try and second-guess what Bill would decide than it was to work out his own feelings. This decision was impossibly hard. He would be dooming the world in one way or another no matter what he chose to do, and not choosing at all was not an option. All the clues and all the hints that they had found pointed to Desmond being the one to save them all, and he couldn't see any good coming from shirking his responsibility. In desperation, he looked over at Clay.

'What do you think I should do?' he asked, a slight plea in his voice.

Clay looked a little taken aback at being asked. 'It's not up to-'

'I know, but I want to hear what you think. I ... It was almost you. If the timing had been a little different - if Abstergo had caught me first - then you'd be the one making this choice. So what would you do?'

Clay didn't answer at first. He looked up at the moon again, still hugging himself tightly, as though the answers were in the heavens. Finally he replied, 'I don't even know that much about them. The Ones Who Came Before. I've interacted with them more than anyone else, and all I ever really learnt was that they have to downgrade their thought process about a million times before they're even capable of communicating with us. They laugh when we call them gods, but they didn't earn that title for no reason. They are ... unfathomable. They might even be unbeatable.'

'But Adam and Eve, and the first humans, they fought. They rebelled. They won, didn't they?'

'Yeah, and where are they now? They're dead and gone, but Juno is still here. If thousands of years of fire and ice and earthquakes couldn't kill her, what chance do we have?' Clay finally looked away from the sky, and down at the grass just beyond the porch. 'But the Templars are human. Alan Rikkin is human. We know how to kill humans, probably better than anyone else.'

So. It was obvious which option Clay thought was best. Desmond should probably be worried that he was seeing sense in the words of a madman, but at this point he would take any kind of advice that was available. Besides, Clay was right. Their chances of beating the Templars might be minimal, but at least the Templars were a familiar enemy. 'Better the devil you know, right?' Desmond sighed aloud.

No reply came from Clay, who seemed to be grasping at the last reserves of his sanity and focus. Desmond swallowed the lump of dull terror in his throat and put a hand gently on Clay's shoulder.

'Come on, let's go inside,' he said. 'I need you to show me Minerva's message before the others wake up.'

They turned their backs on the moon and returned to the shelter of the house.


	10. Chapter 10

**27th October 2012**

It felt strange to be this close to New York City, but not to visit his old life. Desmond had stared out over the twinkling lights and tall buildings - marvelling at how small Manhattan seemed from this high up - as they flew over the metropolis on the way to Westchester County Airport. It wasn't the most convenient place they could have landed; Desmond had identified the location of the Grand Temple by looking at an online satellite map of North America and zooming in to replicate the vision that Juno had shown him, and had pinned it down to a hill just outside of a village called Turin, about 300 miles away from NYC. This was one of the few airports left, however, where the Assassins still had enough pull to have a plane land without being recorded by the authorities, and to allow its passengers to disembark without showing ID.

Things had not gone smoothly. The Assassin team who were supposed to be travelling in from Moscow had never arrived and, after several failed attempts to contact them, Bill had been forced to travel to the transport location without them. They had used the last of their sedatives to keep Daniel docile, but the disappearance of their backup team weighed heavily upon the thoughts of the group. To make matters worse, they were now forced to cool their heels in Westchester before they travelled on to Turin, as they waited for Daniel to be taken off their hands.

'Let's just hope _this_ team actually shows up,' Shaun muttered darkly.

He, Desmond, and Rebecca were in the main room of the safe house, where they'd been unsuccessfully attempting to connect Desmond up to the Animus, more to pass the time than out of any particular necessity. Rebecca had suggested that perhaps Desmond's implant might be creating a kind of interference. She had said so loudly, while Bill was in earshot, but he had kept his back turned and at that moment his cellphone had rung, giving him an excuse to leave the room.

Desmond sat up from the machine, unconsciously rubbing the back of his neck. 'They're not supposed to arrive until tomorrow morning,' he pointed out in a weak effort to keep the mood from getting too dark. 

'They've been checking in regularly,' Rebecca added. 'No hitches so far. That phone call that Bill just took was probably from them as well.'

Shaun didn't reply. He had been squinting at his computer screen as though it had personally offended him, but midway through Rebecca's words he sighed and gently pulled his glasses off and rubbed his forearm over his weary eyes in the same move.

'Shaun?' Rebecca said in an unusually soft voice. She tended to give as good as she got with Shaun, the two of them frequently engaging in good-natured ribbing and verbal battles, but the genuine care that she had for him was particularly apparent at that moment. Her brow was wrinkled and she looked fundamentally troubled by Shaun's misery.

'I'm fine,' Shaun muttered, replacing his glasses and shrugging his shoulders a little, as though his worries were creatures clawing at his back and he could physically shake them loose. Desmond and Rebecca exchanged a significant look. It was safe to say that whenever Shaun stopped complaining and insisted that nothing was wrong, it meant that something really _was_ wrong.

Rebecca stood up from her own desk, walked over to Shaun, and gripped his shoulder gently. 'Hey. It's OK.' She didn't specify what she meant, but Desmond saw Shaun drop his head and turn his face slightly away from her, as if the words had triggered a reaction that he did not want them to see. 

'It's really not OK, though, is it?' he said at last, swivelling his chair around so that he was facing both of them, his mouth a tight, bitter line. 'I mean, am I the only one who's feeling a little bit backed into a corner? I don't see the Templars losing entire teams in one fell swoop, time and time again.'

'They lost Daniel,' Desmond said quietly.

'One Templar,' Shaun said scornfully. 'And how long do you think we're capable of holding him prisoner? Your dad's being diplomatic , Desmond, but what do you reckon they'll do with Cross once he's out of your sight? Put him up in a nice hotel and give him an open tab on the room service? Let's just say that the Geneva Convention doesn't exactly fit in with the Assassins' philosophy of "everything is permitted". If he doesn't manage to break out - and I wouldn't bet on a single Assassin team being able to hold him for long - then Cross will be a corpse long before we get to Turin.'

At Shaun's words, Desmond felt a queer ripple of emotion run through him once more: a reflexive instinct against the idea of Daniel being killed by the Assassins. 'They wouldn't do that,' he said uncertainly.

Shaun laughed, derisive and humourless. 'We're Assassins, Desmond. You'll find that life gets a whole lot easier once you stop thinking of us as heroes.'

'Stop it, Shaun,' Rebecca interjected sharply.

'What?' Shaun demanded, folding his arms in a defensive stance. He turned back to Desmond, speaking quickly, as though a set of floodgates had broken and he couldn't give his opinion fast enough. 'I told you why I joined up, right?'

Desmond vaguely remembered the story. Shaun had caught Abstergo's attention when he dug a little too deep into their past, leading them to abduct him in much the same way that Desmond had been taken. Rebecca, who had been keeping an increasingly worried eye on Shaun's exploits, had managed to rescue him before he reached Abstergo HQ. Desmond wasn't sure of exactly how the rescue went down, but his instincts told him that as part of the escape Shaun had been forced to kill someone for the first time. The historian had joined up with the Assassins afterwards because of the refuge that they offered him, rather than out of a particular belief in their philosophy or righteousness, and had stayed on for the research opportunities that had been opened up to him and - Desmond guessed - because of his attachment to Rebecca.

'It came down to join or die,' Shaun pressed on, without waiting for an answer. 'Turns out I get to join _and_ die. Lucky me, eh?'

'We're not going to die!' Rebecca insisted angrily.

'Are you sure about that? Because even if the solar flares don't kill us, the Brotherhood is in tatters and Abstergo are more powerful than ever.' He leaned forward a little in his chair, breathing heavily, eyes bright: caught up in the catharsis of finally venting. 'Do you have any idea how many Assassins they've killed over the past decade, Desmond? In the last few months alone? It's been escalating. They're hunting us down, and they _will_ find us, they will...' 

His voice trailed away as he glanced over at Rebecca, who had one hand over her mouth and was looking as close to tears as Desmond had ever seen her. He watched Shaun's anger and despair shift seamlessly into an expression of deep regret, and saw his mouth open and close a few times as though trying to physically take his words back.

'I'm sorry,' he blurted out at last, the apology sounding awkward but sincere. When Rebecca didn't respond his face crumpled further and - in an action so out of character it almost seemed to be taking place in a dream - Shaun stood up abruptly out of his chair, leaving it spinning, and wrapped his arms around her in a fierce, frightened hug. After a moment or two Rebecca brought her hands up and rubbed them up and over his back.

'It's OK,' she repeated, her voice thicker than usual and muffled where her face was pressed into Shaun's shoulder.

Shaun mumbled something in her ear that Desmond couldn't make out. He averted his gaze for a moment, glancing down at the floor as he waited for the two of them to finish embracing. There didn't seem to be anything more than friendship between Shaun and Rebecca, but even so it felt voyeuristic to stare at them during such a moment.

Bill reentered the room and the two of them hurriedly disengaged, both looking a little more settled and less miserable. Shaun - his cheeks a little red with embarrassment - pushed his glasses up his nose and cleared his throat. 'Everything OK, Bill?'

It was a reasonable question. Bill's head was slightly lowered, his lips slightly parted, and there was a deep line between his eyebrows where they had been drawn together in a pained frown. He cleared his throat and looked up slowly. 'I ... may need to go away for a couple of days.'

'What?' Shaun yelped disbelievingly. 'Bill, we have to...'

'I know, Shaun. Look, hopefully I won't be gone too long. If I'm not back within 48 hours then ... then start making your way to Turin without me. I'll leave the Pieces of Eden with Desmond, so that you'll have everything you need to open the Grand Temple and defend yourselves if necessary.'

'We need _you_ ,' Desmond exclaimed, surprising himself.

Bill glanced over at his son, his expression soft and open. 'I'm sorry, Desmond. I know this isn't fair. I wouldn't leave if it wasn't...' He hesitated, as if uncertain whether it was safe to finish the sentence.

'What is it, Bill?' Rebecca asked.

He sighed resignedly. 'An Assassin team over in Ohio has come under siege by Abstergo agents. They're holding the Templars off for now, but they need backup and I ... I need to go.'

'Ohio?' Rebecca echoed. 'Isn't that where...?'

'Yes.'

'Oh. _Oh_.' Her eyes widened.

'What?' Desmond demanded, looking from one to the other in frustration.

It was Bill who answered. 'It's your mother, Desmond. She's on the team that are being attacked.'

After a short, numb silence, Shaun cleared his throat and spoke. 'Sorry to be the cynical one here, but it's awfully interesting that this happens just as we get back to the states. It's almost like Abstergo are trying to draw us out.'

'Oh, that's exactly what they're doing. They're probably hoping that Desmond will run right to them.'

'Then that's what I'll do!' Desmond said furiously, standing up with his heart racing and plans of the fastest route to Ohio already forming in his head. It had been almost ten years since he had last seen his mother, and he'd run away without so much as a picture to remember her by, but a connection like that wasn't easily forgotten. He still remembered the way that she smelled and the easiness of her smile. She had been the only one of his parents to whom he had ever felt comfortable venting his frustrations to any extent and he had loved her, almost enough to stay behind for her. The thought of her dying at the hands of Templars, before he had a chance to see her again and apologise for all that he had done, made Desmond feel sick. He continued, fists clenched at his sides, 'They want the Pieces of Eden? They can try and take them off me and see what happens! I'll go as well.'

'No, Desmond.' Bill raised a hand in a placating gesture. 'It doesn't give me any pleasure to say this, but you and your mission are far more important than ... than this. You need to get to Turin and you need to find the Temple. If I'm not back before you leave, I'll join you at the Temple later.'

'If you don't die, you mean,' Desmond challenged.

'Yes, that's what I mean,' Bill confirmed unflinchingly. His mouth quirked into a shadow of a smile. 'Though I'm tougher than I look, Desmond. Don't start making funeral arrangements just yet.'

Rebecca laughed weakly. 'Your dad's right, Des. I've seen him kick some serious butt. He can handle a few Templars.'

Desmond could only imagine what his face looked like at that moment. He felt stricken. Much as he might disagree with his father, it had been a relief to have him around. After Lucy had ... after what Desmond had done to Lucy, there had been an empty space in their group where a leader was missing, and Bill had stepped in to fill it almost immediately. Whether he simply went away for a couple of days or whether he disappeared forever, Desmond would be left to take control of their actions. There would no longer be anyone to defer to.

'Come on, Desmond.' Bill said. 'I need to leave now if I want to have a chance of getting there in time. There's something I have to talk to you about before I go.'

'Good luck, Bill,' Rebecca said, forcing a brave smile onto her face. Shaun said nothing, but pulled his lower lip between his teeth and worried at it.

Desmond followed his father to the garage, where a nondescript station wagon was parked next to their van. They didn't speak on the way, and when they finally reached the car and Bill leaned back against it, they regarded each other silently for a moment.

'Promise me you'll come back,' Desmond said softly. 

'I can promise you I'll try,' Bill offered.

'You'd better. And ... say hi to Mom for me?'

'Of course.'

'Tell her I'm...'

'Desmond,' Bill interrupted. 'There is something that you should know. I don't know if it will be of any consequence, but I want to leave you armed with as much knowledge as possible.'

'OK. Hit me.'

Bill paused for a moment, presumably to decide upon the right phrasing for what he was about to say. 'You understand why you're able to use the Apple of Eden and the other artefacts, don't you? Why you were chosen to carry out this task?'

'I think so. It's something to do with my genes, right?'

'Yes. From what we know, it seems that Adam and Eve were a new hybrid species, created by Juno and the others. Their DNA was a cross between that of the First Civilisation and that of the humans, which means that they lacked the neurotransmitter that made humans susceptible to the Pieces of Eden, and they also possessed certain trace abilities derived from Those Who Came Before.'

'Like Eagle Vision?'

'Precisely. Most Assassins - those who were born into the Brotherhood - are descended from Adam and Eve in some way, but because of the high concentration of human genes in their DNA they have the same neurotransmitter that the original humans had, and are unable to resist the Pieces of Eden, or to use them properly. It's very rare for anyone to have high enough concentrations of First Civilisation DNA to be able to do what you can do. Only one in seven million is born like you - a hybrid.'

'But Altaïr was. And so was Ezio. They were both able to resist the Apple.'

'Exactly.'

Desmond thought this over. One in seven million. So about seven hundred people on the planet. That ... wasn't as small a number as he had originally thought. The prophecies and the codex had all seemed to make out that he was the only one capable of opening the Grand Temple, but perhaps they had simply meant that he would be the only hybrid to end up in the right place at the right time.

'Who are the others?' he asked his father. 'Do we know of anyone else who can do what I do?'

Bill nodded. 'Abstergo have been tracking them down, and we've had eyes inside Abstergo. Of the people they've found...' His expression darkened. 'Abstergo managed to recruit a few of them. Quite a lot of them were Assassins, and I'm sorry to say that most of those were killed during the raids. But there are three who are going to be of particular interest to you.' He looked Desmond at Desmond and said, in a very serious voice, 'Clay, for one. It was the reason I recruited him in the first place. The second person - and I don't think he even knows - is Daniel.'

' _Daniel_?' Desmond was staggered for a moment, until he remembered Daniel using Eagle Vision in the temple below the Winter Palace. Of course, he had been an Assassin before he joined the Templars. 'Who else?'

'It's been difficult trying to get definitive confirmation on this one. I almost don't want it to be true. But ... Alan Rikkin appears to be a hybrid. It's why Abstergo grew so much more powerful once he joined. I believe it's also why he became CEO. He seems to have the highest concentration of First Civilisation DNA out of anyone, aside from you.'

Desmond cast his eyes downwards as he tried to process this. It felt almost obscene to think that the most powerful Templar in the world was in possession of abilities that were a trademark of the Assassin brotherhood. But perhaps, he thought, that was how the two factions operated, and why they held such a deep-seated hatred of each other. Perhaps that was why there had been so many betrayals. Perhaps each Assassin had the seed of a Templar deep inside him, and each Templar had the seed of an Assassin. Perhaps they were not so alien to each other as they liked to believe.

The knowledge also brought his mind back to The Decision, as he had begun to call it (it turned out that Clay was not the only one capable of arbitrary capitalisation). The brief stay in Westchester had allowed him to procrastinate, but this new knowledge just added one more factor into the pot. Desmond had been leaning towards the Templars on the basis that, as Clay had said, Rikkin was only human, but now it seemed that he might not be completely human at all. If Alan Rikkin was capable of controlling the Pieces of Eden to the same degree as Desmond himself, then handing him two of them at once could make him unstoppable. But would he be more unstoppable than Juno? That was the question...

'Desmond,' Bill said, breaking into his thoughts. 'I have to-'

'Yeah, yes, go,' Desmond said hurriedly. 'Mom needs you and I ... I can take care of things here.'

'I know you can, son.' Bill smiled a little, and looked as though he was about to say something else. Then he seemed to change his mind and instead went to open the car door.

_He's your dad_ , Desmond's brain reminded him. _And you might never see him again_.

'Dad...' He caught him by the elbow, and he had no idea how to do this, so he just pulled Bill back around and put one arm over his right shoulder, the other under his left armpit, and embraced him. Bill was obviously taken by surprise and it felt a little awkward and uncomfortable, so Desmond just pulled him in tight and squeezed his eyes tightly shut and tried to remember when they had last done this. Had they ever done this?

'OK,' he said at last, releasing Bill and trying not to look him in the face. 'Now go.'

* * *

Desmond suffered a brief crisis of not knowing what to do with himself after Bill left. A large part of him wanted to find Clay and talk to him about The Decision, perhaps try to wring the case for the Templars out of him again.  But he couldn't keep relying upon Clay to do his thinking for him. He thought about joining Rebecca and Shaun again, but decided that he didn't want to interrupt them in case they were having a heartfelt talk about what had just happened. Finally, he steeled his nerves and tried to think of what his father would be doing right now, and his thoughts came round to Daniel. 

As far as Desmond knew, Bill had been the only one of them to check on Daniel and bring him food and water. He hadn't given explicit instructions before he'd left - perhaps hoping that Desmond might forget and leave their guest to die of dehydration - but that seemed like a fairly constructive task to be getting on with. The kind of thing that a _leader_ would do.

Desmond stopped by the kitchen and grabbed a sports drink that apparently contained electrolytes (whatever they were) and one of the prepackaged sandwiches that Shaun had bought from a gas station on the way over. He also grabbed the spare set of keys for the safe house, before heading down the stairs to the basement.

Opening the door took some time. There was a basic lock underneath the doorknob, but there were also two strong, padlocked bolts - one at the top of the door and one at the bottom - and a hasp lock with another padlock. It seemed that Daniel was not the first prisoner that the Assassins had housed here. One of the padlocks had a combination that Desmond did not know, so he opened up his Eagle Vision and twiddled the wheels around until he found the faces that glowed the brightest shade of gold. To his satisfaction, this worked and the padlock popped open.

He picked up the sandwich in one hand and the bottle in the other before shouldering his way into the basement. Daniel's chair was in the dead centre of the room, but Daniel was not in it.

Desmond's first thought was that his father must have taken pity on the Templar and allowed him to lie down to get some sleep. The second thought didn't arrive until something dropped past his eyes, and by the time he'd had time to swear internally, the rope was already tightening and burning at his throat.

Daniel must have been hiding behind the door. Desmond could hear a hiss of breath in his ear and felt an immense, crushing pressure over his Adam's apple where the rope was digging into his flesh. He tried to swallow and it skidded painfully up the column of his throat and locked into place just underneath his jaw. Daniel - weakened by his days of imprisonment - was relying on his body weight to do most of the work: leaning back and pulling Desmond with him until only his toes were scraping against the floor.

'Easy, easy,' Daniel grated, his voice so close that Desmond wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't imagining it. 'Let go. Just relax.'

It wasn't an easy instruction to follow. Desmond's head felt swollen and tight, like it was a balloon about to burst, and he had gone into a full-on panic mode as he struggled to take in even the tiniest whistle of breath. He could hear a hideous choking sound coming from his ravaged throat and he realised that this was _it_ , he could really die like this, and if he died then everyone would die.

It was this thought that spurred Desmond into action, and even as his vision began to darken into that final darkness, he removed one of his hands from where it had been scrabbling at the rope and reached back, over his head, finding a fistful of Daniel's hair and yanking him forward, far enough forward that Desmond could turn his head and sink his teeth into the side of Daniel's neck. The Templar screeched in pain and loosened his grip for a fraction of a second, and that was all that Desmond needed.

He brought his spare elbow around and rammed it into the side of Daniel's ribs. Daniel was knocked back and away so violently that Desmond felt an unpleasant ripping sensation resonate through his fingers and was left with a few strands of Daniel's hair still in his fist. He sucked in a huge, wheezing, relieved breath and staggered over to the side of the room, triggering the mechanism on his hidden blade as he did so.

Daniel was leaned against one wall, Desmond against another, both of them equidistant from the door. They regarded each other defensively for a moment, both keeping very still. Daniel's eyes flickered over to the door. Desmond automatically looked in the same direction, and the Templar took this temporary lapse in concentration as an opportunity to push himself off the wall and make a dash for escape. Exasperated, Desmond lurched over and managed to tackle him around the waist.

They both went crashing painfully to the ground, and Desmond hurriedly pinned Daniel down by the wrists. He was surprised at how easily he was able to hold him; he had been able to feel the hard planes of the muscles in Daniel's torso as he was being strangled, and there were thick, toned biceps coming out of the sleeves of his T-shirt. Daniel's face, however, was deathly pale and his lips were dry and cracked. He looked as though he was fighting just to stay conscious. Desmond couldn't help but wonder just how frequently Bill had been bringing the captive sustenance.

The discarded rope that had nearly taken Desmond's life lay nearby. Baring his teeth and keeping his wrist blade extended, he shoved and rolled Daniel over onto his stomach and - pressing the tip of the blade against the base of his skull to keep him still - Desmond reached over and grabbed the rope, folding one wrist over the other behind Daniel's back and kneeling heavily on him as he retied the bindings, noticing as he did so that Daniel's hands were raw and bloody and scraped from where he had presumably wriggled them free. Desmond then stood up cautiously, watching Daniel carefully for any sign of movement, and retrieved some more rope to tie his ankles with. 

Once he was satisfied with the security of his prisoner, Desmond picked up the sandwich and bottle from where they had been dropped. He turned Daniel over with his foot and glared down at him.

'You dick,' he said. 'I was bringing you lunch.'

Daniel did not reply. His eyes were closed and he was breathing thinly. Desmond rolled his eyes, transferred the meal into one hand, and used the free hand to grasp the back of Daniel's collar and tug him backwards towards the wall. The material tightened against Daniel's neck, causing his eyes to fly open and his hands to struggle against the rope that bound them.

'You're ... choking me,' he wheezed.

'Ha! That's fucking rich. Now  _move_.'

After tugging at Daniel's shirt for a few more moments and watching him attempt to wriggle across the floor, Desmond gave up and tucked his hands under Daniel's arms, dragging him backwards until he was propped up against the wall, arms twisted painfully behind him, his head drooping towards his chest. Sighing in irritation, Desmond used his teeth to pop the plastic cap off the sports drink and spat it across the room before flicking it open. He held the teat to Daniel's flaking, unresponsive lips.

'Come on,' he said harshly. 'Drink. It's got electrolytes.'

'What the fuck are electrolytes?' Daniel muttered, not lifting his head.

'Hell if I know. Just drink it, asshole, I don't have all day.'

Growing impatient, Desmond lifted Daniel's chin with one hand and tipped his head back, using the other hand to hold the sports drink to his mouth and squeeze it gently until a trickle of yellowish liquid wetted the Templar's lips and disappeared into his mouth. Desmond paused for a moment, watching Daniel's throat until he saw it convulse and heard him swallow, and then lifted the bottle again and repeated the motion.

After this had been done a few times, Daniel seemed to become a little more animated. His eyes - which had been half-closed to slits - opened properly and he looked up at Desmond, poking his tongue out to soak up the remaining liquid on the outside of his mouth. Some of it had dribbled down into his beard, which had grown out from the trimmed goatee into a full, all-over scruff.

'God,' he whispered huskily. 'Please tell me that wasn't your piss.'

'It wasn't my piss.'

'Because it sorta tasted like piss.'

'Do you want this sandwich or not?'

'Did you piss on that as well?'

Desmond glared at him and began to stand up. Daniel jerked his head in protest.

'No, I want it. Give me a little more to drink first, though.'

Bristling a little at his commanding tone, Desmond returned to a crouch and lifted the bottle again. 'I thought you said it tasted like piss.'

'Didn't say I didn't like it.'

Desmond couldn't help but give a surprised snort. 'You're a freak.'

He pushed the bottle against Daniel's mouth, and this time the Templar snapped his head forward a little and caught it between his teeth, suckling at it in a strangely infantile manner. He drank for a long time before releasing the bottle again and gasping for breath. Desmond set the bottle aside and began to unwrap the sandwich, feeling Daniel's eyes on him.

'I just tried to kill you,' Daniel said, his voice stronger now. 'And you're feeding me. Why?'

'Shaun mentioned the Geneva Convention,' Desmond explained. 'I realised that the UN probably wouldn't be too happy if they stuck their heads around the door right now.'

Daniel laughed. 'Probably not, considering half of them are Templars.' He watched the sandwich hungrily as it emerged from its wrapping before adding, in an insidious voice, 'Gotta say, you're being a lot gentler than your daddy. Where is he?'

'He's busy,' Desmond replied in clipped, hostile tones.

'Gone away?' Daniel persisted, a knowing grin appearing on his lips.

'None of your fucking business.'

'Have I touched a nerve? Feeling a little abandoned, are we? You're not exactly leadership material, Desmond. I hope nothing untoward happens while you're here all alone.'

'I'm not alone!' Desmond snapped, squeezing the unwrapped sandwich tightly in his hand until some of the filling dropped out onto the floor.

He heard the first gunshot, somewhere upstairs, and the sound of someone yelling in anguish.

'Oh?' Daniel said softly. 'Are you sure about that?


	11. Chapter 11

The battlefield was polluted and only dimly visible. The remains of mustard gas hung oily in the air and upon the ground, and John Sargent felt his boots slipping in it as he stumbled through the trench. There were boards laid down in the mud but they were slicked over and all but useless now, the wood soaked and rotting in the moisture. He could hear the sucking footsteps of the other men behind him, but when he glanced back they were mere shadows in the dark.

'Do we still have everybody?' he called over his shoulder.

'Yes, Sergeant,' replied Private Jones from somewhere not not far behind him. There was a slight grin in the lad's voice that gave John a warming flicker of humour. The men never seemed to tire of the fact that his surname matched his rank, and he suspected that whenever they addressed him they were secretly using the former, and experiencing a small, rebellious thrill at the informality of it. John did not mind. It was his hope that he would be an officer before the year was out, should he live that long, and that he would return to his wife a decorated man. As soon as he landed on English shores he would sever all the horror that he had seen from his mind and leave it behind in France.

He raised his voice as he called back, 'Hands on shoulders, men. It's darker than Polyphemus' lair out here.'

There was a rumble of confused muttering at the reference, but presently he felt Jones' fingers fall and tighten upon his right shoulder, and he trusted that the order had been followed through. Now he was the head of a long, weary caterpillar, leading them all back to the trench that they had been forced to evacuate when the chemicals fell. Their tin cups of tea were doubtless still resting where they had been set down and knocked over, and there would be bodies to clear out before they could settle down for the night.

They had walked several miles already just to get here, but this was the final stretch. John reached the final corner and began to turn it, when suddenly Jones' fingers tightened on his shoulder and the lad stopped walking, holding John back firmly.

'What is it, Jones?' he asked.

The reply came strangely garbled, as though two people were speaking at once.

The voice that sounded most like Jones replied, 'There are people already in there, sir.'

The voice that sounded nothing like Jones said, 'Hold up, Clay, they've got guns.'

John shook his head in confusion, then leaned forward a little, enough to peer around the rough corner and along the length of the trench. Sure enough, he caught the flickering movement of dark shapes in the lingering yellow smoke and pulled his head back quickly.

'Backs against the wall, lads,' he hissed through his teeth.

Jones opened his mouth and said two things at once.

'Is it the Hun, sir?'

'Snap out of it, Clay, I _need_ you.'

Then, suddenly, in a brief and awful flash, the trench wavered uncertainly and morphed into clean white walls and doors, with rough carpeting underfoot in the stead of mud and boards. John gritted his teeth and forcibly drove this odd vision away. Now was not the time to lose his nerve.

He heard footsteps tramping towards them and flattened further against the wall of the trench, feeling moisture soaking into the back of his jacket. Jones let loose a whispered curse beside him and gripped John's shirt, trying to pull him backwards and away from the figure hunting them down. John held his ground and tensed his muscles.

The Hun rounded the corner. He was formed from a solid, black, gaping maw of empty space and the pits of his eyes glowed yellow in his head, smoke curling out of the sockets, tinted the same sickening colour as the light behind them. He seemed to be impossibly tall, at least seven feet, and his mouth was opening, opening, ready to call to the rest of his monstrous brood and bring all hell down upon John and his men.

The part of John that longed to survive the war felt a sudden urge to run away and never look back, but the part of him that was determined to _win_ the war reached up and caught the monster by the throat, and brought his knee up to slam brutally into the creature's groin. The Hun snarled and thrashed but John bore him to the ground and slammed his fist down upon where the nose should have been - once, twice, phantom teeth grazing his knuckles upon the third blow.

The whole world was shaking now. This was no trench that he was in. It seemed to be a thousand different places all at once, and John wondered if he had succumbed to the madness of war as he saw Jones flex his fingers oddly, a slim, shining dagger sliding down from the lad's sleeve. John snarled ferociously and yanked the Hun's head backwards by the hair, his throat open and exposed and bursting like overripe fruit as Jones sliced the blade through the taut skin. The Hun gurgled and trashed before finally falling still.

Jones fell back against the wall breathlessly, his fingers shaking, and looked up at John with wide eyes.

'I guess that works too,' he said.

* * *

Desmond slowly withdrew his blade, his bloodsoaked hand shaking a little as he kept the other hand gripped firmly on Clay's shoulder to keep him from running away. One look at his companion's face told him that Clay was clearly not completely settled in the proper reality, and Desmond couldn't help but wonder whether the anti-psychotics had actually been getting any use.

'Clay,' he said slowly. 'Have you seen Shaun or Rebecca since the attack started?'

The only response he got was a furrowed brow and a low moan of pain as Clay clutched at his head and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Desmond tried not to let the frustration get the better of him, but the cry he had heard after the first gunshot had sounded an awful lot like Rebecca's voice. It had been followed by several more shots and a few distant yells, but in the time it had taken to secure Daniel the noise had died away and an eerie silence had been left behind.

Despite the fact that Clay was so close, Desmond felt desperately alone. Leaning over from where he was kneeling, he shook the other Assassin impatiently by the shoulder, and his next words came out as a desperate plea. 'Come on, Clay, I need you to pull it together.'

The reply came in a British accent. 'Hold the line, Jones,' Clay said insistently. 'They cannot take us all.' He shook his head violently. 'Desmond ... Jones...'

'Miles,' Desmond corrected, relief flooding him at the sound of his own name in Clay's usual voice. 'My name is Desmond Miles. And the year is 2012. There are Templars in the building and Rebecca might be hurt. Now are you going to help me, or do I have to stop them by myself?'

Clay looked up, his eyes suddenly sharp and startlingly blue. 'Rebecca?' he repeated.

'Yeah,' Desmond said quickly. 'You remember her?'

'I ... yes. From before.'

Desmond took a moment to translate this. 'Before Abstergo?'

'Yeah.'

Well, that made sense. Clay's pre-Abstergo memories were the only ones of his that were pure and untainted by the Bleeding Effect. Even mentioning Rebecca had seemed to have a grounding effect upon him, and as Clay looked around now he finally seemed to be seeing the world as it actually was.

With a start, Desmond recalled that he still had a headset in the pocket of his jeans. He was supposed to put it on whenever he was separated from the rest of the group, but he had a tendency to forget now that ... well.

It had always been Lucy who had reminded him of it.

He hurriedly extricated the device from his pocket and clipped it onto his ear, flicking a tiny switch on the side to turn it on.

'Anyone there?' he whispered.

The reply came immediately. 'Desmond?' Shaun breathed the word out almost inaudibly. 'Oh, thank God. Where the bloody hell are you?'

'Ground floor, the corridor nearest the kitchen. You?'

'First floor, the hallway cupboard.'

'Is Rebecca with you?'

Shaun didn't reply at first. Desmond felt his stomach tighten into an awful knot.

Then he heard another voice, this one weak and pained and a little groggy. 'I'm here, Des.'

Desmond felt a hand on his arm and looked up to find Clay staring at him, wide-eyed and impatient. He realised that Clay didn't have a headset and therefore had no idea what was being said, and so he nodded almost imperceptibly before continuing.

'Rebecca, you don't sound so good.'

It was Shaun who replied. 'The bloody idiot jumped in front of a bullet that was meant for me.' He was still whispering but there was an audibly pained edge to the words. 'She's been shot, Desmond. In the stomach. I'm keeping pressure on the wound but the skin around it is all dark and I think she's still bleeding inside...' His attempt at a clinical tone wavered and shook.

Desmond felt sick but he made a conscious effort to focus on the most immediate problem. 'Where are the Templars?'

'I managed to activate the security system after the first few got in. The building is locked down but there are about half a dozen Templars still in here with us. I heard them going past a while ago. I have a gun but I can't ... if they find us then...'

'It's fine, just stay there,' Desmond said firmly. 'Rebecca, where are the Pieces of Eden?' He could just as easily have asked Shaun, but Rebecca's silence was filling him with anxiety.

It took a moment for her to respond, and she sounded drugged and distant and frighteningly unlike her usual self. 'Safe in the Animus room. Combination is 4-5-1-9.'

'OK,' Desmond said. 'I'll deal with the Templars. You hold on, alright?'

She didn't reply. Desmond clenched his teeth.

'Alright, Rebecca?'

Shaun cut in. 'Go on, Desmond.' His voice was brittle, an edge of fury to it. 'Sort them out.'

Desmond nodded, even though Shaun couldn't see him, and glanced over at Clay. The man appeared to be lucid, but he looked far from settled, and Desmond knew from experience that Clay could slip over the edge at any moment. If that happened in the middle of a fight there was a good chance that he would get one or both of them killed. It was tempting to simply find another cupboard and tell Clay to wait there while Desmond dealt with the Templars on his own. Resolved that this was the best solution, Desmond stood up and pulled Clay with him.

'Clay, listen...'

'Let me help.'

Desmond opened his mouth hesitantly, uncertain of the most tactful way to do this. 'Go and find Shaun and Rebecca...'

Clay shook his head impatiently. 'I don't want to find Shaun and Rebecca. They have each other already, but you... Look. I don't want to hide. I want to fight. That's what I'm good at.'

Time to get harsh. 'I can't fight Templars and babysit you at the same time!'

Clay didn't even flinch. 'You won't have to.'

'Oh really? Because not five minutes ago you were convinced we were in a World War One trench.'

'Yeah, and I still took out that guy pretty well, didn't I?' Clay said, pointing down at the dead Templar by their feet. 'Take me with you and you'll only be half as outnumbered as you already are.'

Desmond's conviction wavered for a moment, and Clay saw it, and continued in a softer voice.

'You don't have to fight every battle on your own, you know.'

'You think I want to?' Desmond asked scornfully.

'No. Which is why you shouldn't turn down backup. Even if your backup is, you know, a little bit insane.'

Desmond sighed in frustration, but decided to give up fighting Clay on this. They needed to get rid of the Templars before Rebecca bled out, and evening the odds a little couldn't hurt. 'You got some pills with you?'

'Yeah.'

'Take them. I need you sharp if we're going to do this.'

He watched as Clay reluctantly took his medication, grimacing as he swallowed the pills dry, and then jerked his head in the direction of the Animus room that the Templar had emerged from.

Desmond heard the Templars talking amongst themselves when he was about ten feet from the door. It was still slightly ajar and there was - he realised with a lurch - a smear of blood on the frame where Rebecca and Shaun had presumably made their escape. He gestured at Clay to stay low, and then crept forward and peered through the small gap.

The Templars had found the safe. One of them was leaning against it, turning the dial with one hand and pressing the diaphragm of a stethoscope to the surface with the other, listening closely. As Desmond watched, he scowled in frustration and yanked the ear tips out, glaring at his team mates.

'Would you guys keep the noise down?' he snapped. 'I can't hear shit with you talking.'

'What the hell is taking so long?' another Abstergo agent retorted angrily.

'I'd have had it open ten minutes ago if it weren't for you jackasses. This is sort of a delicate procedure.'

The conversation meant that four of the Templars (the sixth that Shaun had mentioned must have been the one that Clay and Desmond had killed in the hallway) had their backs to the door. The fifth Templar - the one by the safe - was about to turn back to continue the job. This would probably be the best hope for an element of surprise that Desmond was going to get, and so he eased the door open and broke into a low, near-silent run.

Throwing his arm out, he sank his wrist blade into the base of the first Templar's skull, the man dying with a short grunt. Before the others had finished turning their heads, Desmond has already quickly shaken the first man off his blade and was slamming it straight into the heart of a second Templar.

The man by the safe whirled around - the diaphragm dropping to thud loosely against his chest - and his eyes widened. 'That's Miles!' he yelled. 'Kill him!'

Desmond filed that away for later consideration as the three remaining enemies drew their pistols. He whirled around and slashed one across the throat, but as he did so he saw, in his peripheral vision, the man on his right raise his gun and aim it squarely at the side of Desmond's head. A blur of terror leapt through him but, as the Templar squeezed his finger on the trigger, Clay appeared, gripping the man's wrist and whipping his arm downwards so that the Templar quite literally shot himself in the foot. He yelped in agony and dropped to the ground, and Desmond turned his head away as Clay did something unpleasant involving his fingers and the Templar's eye sockets. The screaming intensified before being cut off entirely.

It was lucky that he looked away when he did, because the Templar with the stethoscope now had a gun in his hand and was swinging it around to point at Clay. Without thinking, Desmond grabbed the man's wrist and squeezed tightly until his fingers went limp and the gun clattered to the ground. The Templar stared up at him - wide-eyed and terrified - and Desmond hesitated for a fraction of a second with his wrist blade extended and inches from his opponent's face. Then he remembered Rebecca and strengthened his resolve, slamming the blade forward and upwards swiftly so that it pierced the Templar's cheek and entered his brain. His eyes rolled up until only the whites were showing and his blood sprayed down Desmond's sleeve. Then he more or less fell off the blade and collapsed onto the ground.

Clenching his fist to prevent his fingers from trembling, Desmond turned back to Clay, who was looking at the carnage and grinning a little.

'Not bad,' he said. 'What's that, four to one? I think you're beating me.'

'It's not a game, Clay,' Desmond said severely, through the adrenaline racing through him was giving him a weird urge to start cheering.

It took a couple of minutes to get the safe open. Despite having the code, Desmond was unsure of whether to turn the dial left or right first. Finally the lock released with a satisfying clank, and the door swung open to reveal the Apple and the Shard sitting side-by-side in the small, dark space.

Desmond hesitated for a moment. He had not touched the Apple since the day he had killed Lucy, and was not looking forward to doing so now. With great reluctance, and the air of a man trying to pick up a live scorpion, he reached in and flattened his palm against the golden surface before wrapping his fingers around the sphere. A half-painful, half-pleasant sensation ran up his arm and he experienced a strange sense of someone who had opened a small trapdoor to reveal an enormous cavern beyond. Trying to ignore this, he hurriedly shoved the artefact into the pocket of his hoodie before grabbing the Shard and transferring it to the front pocket of his jeans.

'OK,' he said, closing the safe and spinning the dial before turning away from the wall. 'Now what?'

Clay was no longer standing where he had been, but was instead, staring at the small bank of monitors on the other side of the room, each of which was displaying a feed from a different security camera. 'Uh, I don't know,' he replied. 'But whatever you're going to do, you might want to do it quickly. An entire army just showed up outside our front door.'

'Shit.' Desmond hurried over to join him and swallowed hard as he saw the dozen or so trucks parked outside and the heavily armed Templar agents pouring out of them. The safe house's security systems had drawn metal sheets down over the doors and windows, but they wouldn't hold for long.

'Desmond,' Clay said, his steady voice providing a grounding place to focus amidst the panic. 'I can stay here with you or I can head upstairs and help Shaun get Rebecca to the infirmary. Last year, when I was in Abstergo, I relived the memories of a World War Two army medic. I mean, my expertise is about seventy years out of date but I know my way around a bullet wound...'

'Yes, go,' Desmond said firmly, not taking his eyes off the monitors.

Clay nodded, but didn't make any move to leave. 'You heard what that Templar said. You saw how they reacted. They're not interested in retrieving you any more, Desmond. They're just here for the Pieces of Eden. Maybe for Daniel as well.'

'I know,' Desmond said quietly. 'Go on. Help Rebecca.'

Before Clay left, he paused to regard Desmond for a moment, as though figuring something out. Then he gave a small smile of encouragement before walking briskly out of the door.

Once he was sure that he was alone, Desmond sat down heavily on the edge of a desk and dropped his head into his hands. He could hear the shouts of the Templars outside, and knew that time was short, but he took the luxury of it anyway. He waited because he knew that this was it: this was the crossroads at which he would make The Decision. It couldn't have waited much longer at any rate; if the Pieces of Eden were handed to Abstergo then their scientists would need a window in which to adapt and launch the satellite, and if the Assassins went on to Turin they would need time to figure out how to enter the Grand Temple and unlock its secrets.

Right now Desmond had more reason than ever to go with the latter option. Every time he thought of Rebecca bleeding - possibly to death - upstairs, he hated the Templars even more. But the thought of it also reminded him of the way Lucy had died, and of the abject terror Desmond had felt when Juno taken control of his body with ease: the inevitability of the disaster that followed.

This was the point at which Desmond would choose to doom humanity to slavery. That much was unavoidable. But slavery to whom? To a power-hungry, cold-blooded monolith of industry, or to an avaricious goddess of unknowable intelligence and unbound hatred?

Clay may have left the room, but his words had stayed behind. _Rikkin is only human_.

* * *

Daniel had succeeded in eating the sandwich - like a dog - from the floor where Desmond had dropped it, and with the renewed strength was once again attempting to free himself from his bonds. It hurt a lot more the second time around, now that he was fully conscious and the skin of his wrists and hands was already burnt and bleeding. It was almost a relief when he heard the clattering of feet on the steps and was allowed to give up the effort and make a show of lying limp upon the ground. He closed his eyes as well, and tensed the muscles in his legs. Perhaps he could sweep them around and knock Desmond off his feet once he got close enough.

The locks rattled - more hurried and panicked than before - and Daniel heard the door burst open and Desmond take a couple of steps into the room, his shoes scuffing on the floor as he came to a halt.

'Yeah, very cute. You can open your eyes now, 'cause you're definitely not fooling me.'

Daniel opened the eye on the side of his face that wasn't pressed against the dusty stone floor. 'Worth a try,' he said unapologetically.

Desmond smiled sarcastically and crouched down at a safe distance as Daniel manoeuvred himself into a sitting position. Once he was upright, the Assassin spoke again.

'Listen very carefully. I'm going to let you go.'

Daniel didn't so much as blink, but he was definitely listening.

'I know I can't trust you, so I'm going to leave the door unlocked and loosen your ropes enough that you'll be able to wriggle your way free within a few minutes.' He paused for a moment, looking pained. 'When you get to the top of the stairs, make a right. The room directly ahead of you is the Animus room. I've left ... I've left the Pieces of Eden on the seat of the Animus, along with the codes for the security system. You should be able to shut it down and meet up with your buddies out front, if they haven't already managed to bust in by then.'

Daniel took a moment to process this before opening his mouth, but Desmond raised a hand threateningly.

'I'm not done yet. You take the Pieces of Eden back to Rikkin and you make sure they both go up in the satellite, understood? I've told you what's at stake. I know you're a ... a sociopath, or whatever, but I can't believe you'd be willing to let the entire world burn.' He let the statement hang in the air, obviously waiting for a response.

Daniel let him stew for a couple of seconds, feigning thoughtfulness before shaking his head. 'No way. I hear Pennywise are planning to release a new album next year.'

Desmond grinned humourlessly. 'Good. So, it looks like Rikkin isn't too fussed about getting me back any more. The way I understand it, I was only kidnapped in the first place because Vidic needed someone to help you guys find a Piece of Eden. Once they have that, I go way down on their priorities list. So me and the rest of the team are going to make our way out of here quietly, and you get to go home. Everyone wins, right?'

One look at the kid told Daniel everything he needed to know. Desmond was pushed into a corner and was making the most difficult decision of his life. With every word he uttered he looked more and more like he was about to puke. Nonetheless, he seemed thoroughly determined. Probably knew he didn't have any other choice.

'I don't imagine your daddy's going to be very happy when he hears about this,' Daniel said, goading Desmond for the sheer fun of it.

'You let me worry about my father. Now turn around. And if you try anything funny I'll send you back with a couple of extra scars.'


	12. Chapter 12

**2nd November 2012**

'Your father is on his way.'

The words stirred Desmond from his sleep, but his brain was still operating too slowly to fully comprehend them. He blinked into the light pouring in from the open door, and rolled over in the hard bunk where he had been sleeping.

'Becca?' he said blearily. It had become habit to ask whenever he woke up.

'No change. She's still stable. The docs are sounding a little more optimistic, though.'

It was Clay who was speaking. Desmond had guessed that it would be. Shaun hadn't left Rebecca's side since they'd arrived at the hospital, which was situated in one of the northernmost neighbourhoods of the Bronx. Rebecca's doctor was - somewhat ironically - an Assassin, and the main reason that they'd been able to stay here without getting onto Abstergo's radar.

The journey over had been something that Desmond would rather not think about. Clay had sat in the passenger seat, occasionally reading directions while Desmond drove as much over the speed limit as the van would allow. The vehicle had been silent save for the sounds coming from the back: Rebecca groaning weakly in pain, and Shaun breathing harshly and occasionally sobbing in desperation as he tried to keep pressure on the wound without doing any further damage to Rebecca's insides. Desmond had never been much good at driving anything other than a motorcycle, and the added pressure of knowing that any failing on his part could mean Rebecca's death had made things ... a little tense.

Yeah. Better not to think about it.

Desmond sat up slowly, wincing at the pull in his back muscles. The room was usually reserved for use by doctors who needed sleep whilst on call, and the mattresses were bare slivers of things laid out over the metal and wire frames. 'How long was I asleep for this time?' he asked, trying to ignore the naggling thought that was just out of reach at the back of his head.

'About three hours.' Clay stepped into the room and sat down on the bottom bunk next to Desmond, holding out a polystyrene cup of strong, black coffee.

'Thanks.' Desmond took it and lifted it to his lips, blowing gently on it to cool it down. 'Three hours, huh? No wonder I feel so rested.'

'Sorry. I wanted to let you sleep longer.' There was a careful edge to Clay's voice, like he was waiting for Desmond to react to something.

Glancing into the murky brown liquid inside his cup, Desmond took a slow, thoughtful sip, feeling Clay's eyes on him. Then he realised what he was supposed to be reacting to and he swallowed in shock, burning his throat.

'My dad?' he gasped hoarsely. 'He's coming _here_?'

Clay smirked. 'That's what I said.'

'Shit. How long until he arrives?'

'An hour at most. I overheard Shaun talking on the phone to him.'

'Does he know...?'

'... About the Pieces of Eden?' Clay shrugged. 'I don't think so. It's not the sort of news you break over the phone, and I doubt Shaun wanted to be the one to tell him.'

Great. So Desmond had less than an hour to come up with a decent cover story for how they'd lost both Daniel and the Pieces of Eden. Telling the truth was out of the question; there was no way that Bill would understand. With a guilty start, Desmond realised that there was a much more important matter at hand. 'What about my mom? Did you hear if...'

'No idea. You'll have to ask him when he gets here.'

'If I can get a word in edgeways.'

Desmond scrubbed his free hand over his face, suddenly feeling more exhausted than he had before going to sleep. The door had swung shut slightly, so that the shaft of light fell onto Desmond's face but Clay was more or less obscured in darkness, his expression unreadable.

'How are you doing?' Desmond asked, making an effort to inject genuine concern into the question, and surprised to find it coming out naturally. In a strange way he had found himself both dependent upon Clay and feeling weirdly protective of him. He could hazard a guess at the reasons behind this; Rebecca and Shaun were fine to talk to and friendly enough (in Rebecca's case anyway), but to his knowledge neither of them had used the Animus and therefore they could not understand the odd relationship that you developed with it. Clay, though ... Clay had been where Desmond was and gone much, much further beyond. Their shared experience in the machine had made them brothers of a sort, and Clay's greater knowledge of it made Desmond subconsciously look to him for guidance.

'You taking your meds?' Desmond pressed on, when Clay did not respond to the initial inquiry.

'I wouldn't be able to hold up a conversation like this if I wasn't,' Clay replied, a little sharply.

'OK, just making sure.' When Clay continued to radiate defensiveness, Desmond pressed on hastily. 'Look, I just ... I need you to stay with it, OK? With Rebecca injured and my dad being, well, my dad. And Shaun...' He hesitated.

'You should tell Shaun what you did,' Clay said quietly.

Desmond shook his head helplessly. 'He hates me. He'd tell my dad, just to spite me.'

'I don't think he would. I think Shaun would be a lot more sympathetic than you might realise.

Hell, you've probably saved all our lives.'

'I guess.'

'Even if you've only saved us for slavery by the Templars.'

Desmond glared at Clay and opened his mouth to come back with an angry reminder of whose idea it had been to hand the Pieces of Eden to the Templars, but then he registered the teasing tone and decided not to rise. 'Alright, maybe Shaun would understand,' he conceded. 'But I'm not going to tell him. I'm going to have to lie to my father and I want Shaun to have plausible deniability. I can't ask him to lie for me as well.'

'What about me?'

Desmond smirked. 'Who's going to believe you anyway? You're crazy, remember?'

It was a risky comment but luckily Clay took it in the spirit it was intended and laughed, leaning back a little on the bed, propped up from where his hands were flat on the mattress. 'What is the official line we're going with?' he asked. 'Probably best to agree on something beforehand.'

The question wasn't so daunting now that Desmond had had time to think it over. 'OK, how about this...'

* * *

Rebecca woke up shortly before Bill returned to the hospital, and the three other men were already gathered around her bed. To celebrate, Desmond had used some of their spare cash to buy a bunch of flowers from the gift shop, causing Shaun to glare at him and accuse him of flirting.

'They're lovely, Desmond,' Rebecca assured him, her voice still blurry from the strong painkillers she was on. She squinted around and said, 'Shaun?'

'I'm here,' Shaun responded in a much gentler tone, leaning in.

'Shaun, I just want to say...'

He shook his head in a distressed manner and interrupted. 'There'll be plenty of time for that, the doctors said you're going to be fine, just fine...'

'I know, but I just really want to let you know...' She coughed weakly before continuing with a shade of her usual mischievous grin. 'I saved your ass again.'

Shaun gaped at her for a moment before twitching irritably like an owl reshuffling its feathers and fixing her with an unconvincing scowl. 'Oh yes, haha, how did I know that the first thing you'd do upon waking up would be to gloat.'

'Has she saved your ass before?' Clay inquired, deadpan.

'Multiple times,' Rebecca replied before Shaun could open his mouth.

'Not _that_ many times,' Shaun insisted.

It was at this point that Bill rounded the corner. Desmond turned reluctantly to look at him and stopped to stare for a moment. 'Oh Jesus,' he blurted out unthinkingly.

'Sorry I didn't get here sooner,' Bill said, by way of a greeting. 'The doctors saw me on the way in and insisted on herding me into a room and cleaning me up.'

Desmond wasn't surprised. It was hard to tell the extent of the damage, since a lot of it was concealed, but Bill's right eye was covered by a pad of cotton wool wrapped in place with a bandage, and that side of his face was largely covered with thick gauze, the tail ends of long cuts and grazes visible at the edges of the white fabric. His beard had been shaven around a long, deep, vertical cut on his chin that was held together with stitches and he was moving stiffly, suggesting that there were further injuries hidden underneath his clothes.

He didn't look like he'd slept at all since leaving them five days ago.

There was a respite period of approximately two seconds before Bill fixed Desmond with an weary, accusatory stare and said, 'You're not in Turin.'

Desmond's heart sank, but before he had a chance to respond Shaun said tersely, 'They think Rebecca's going to be OK, Bill.'

'Hi, Bill,' Rebecca said dozily, waving a hand in a half-hearted fashion. She seemed to be on her way back to sleep already.

'Rebecca,' Bill said curtly, his expression softening for a moment as he looked over at her before fixing his son with a steely gaze once more. 'Desmond. You're not in Turin.'

'How's Mom?' Desmond demanded. He honestly wasn't just trying to put off the conversation - he needed to know.

'Alive.' There was no swaying Bill's attention. 'Why aren't you in Turin?'

Shaun was standing up now, his ears reddening in the way they usually did when he was working up a temper. 'In case you hadn't noticed, Bill, Rebecca's been shot. She nearly died.'

'And there's no point in going to Turin now. We lost the Pieces of Eden,' Clay said, quietly but clearly.

Bill's one visible eye widened. He looked at Clay as though hoping the statement was the result of some hallucination, before turning back to Desmond. 'Tell me that's not true,' he begged in a harsh voice.

'Daniel too,' Clay added. He was being obnoxiously blunt, but Desmond sent him a silent prayer of gratitude for being the one to break the news.

Bill maintained eye contact with Desmond just long enough to see the guilt there, and then lowered his gaze. He didn't look angry, not yet. He simply looked wrecked, as though he had spent five days climbing a mountain only to find himself at the foot of it once more, the aching distance returned and nothing accomplished. His balance rocked a little, and Desmond wondered in alarm if Bill was about to pass out.

'Dad, you should lie down. There's a bed-'

Bill cut him off with a single look, his eyes alert once more and blazing. _Oh boy_ , Desmond thought. _Now he's angry_.

'Tell me how this happened,' he said. He wasn't shouting, but he wasn't far away from it.

Desmond swallowed hard, pulled together the threads of his virtually non-existent acting skills to form a passable poker face, and began. 'We were attacked. The Templars must have been waiting for you to leave-' (oh, that was a cruel thing to imply, but guilt was the only thing that might curb Bill's suspicion) '-and they hit us out of nowhere. They shot Rebecca, and by the time I got to the Animus room they'd already broken the safe and found the Pieces of Eden.'

Rebecca was asleep again, but out of the corner of his eye Desmond could see Shaun watching him pensively, trying to tally this version of events with his own recollections. Desmond silently sent a prayer that Shaun wouldn't start questioning the story.

'Then what happened?' Bill demanded heavily. 'Didn't you fight them?'

'There were too many of them.' It was not Desmond who had answered, but Clay. He sold the lie with enviable ease, looking his old mentor unflinchingly in the face. 'They all had guns and we only had one blade between us. We would have been slaughtered if we'd tried to take them on.'

'You didn't even try?' Bill echoed disbelievingly.

'Real life isn't like the Animus, Bill,' Clay retorted, a strange grin playing over his lips. 'You can't just desynchronise and try again until you work out the right approach. You get one try and if you do it wrong, you're dead. I didn't think you'd want to gamble your own son's life when the odds were that bad. Maybe I was wrong.'

'So you gambled the fate of the entire world instead?' Bill was apparently still too stunned or too exhausted to shout, but the vitriol in his voice made Desmond physically recoil - the movement unfortunately drawing his father's attention. 'Did I not impress on you the importance of getting to that Temple, Desmond?' he ranted. 'Was there something else I could have said or done to make you see that this was our one shot at saving everything.'

Desmond felt a sudden rush of rage surge up through him and explode from his mouth, and before he knew it he was yelling: 'That's pretty fucking rich! Where the hell were you? It got right done to the wire and you _abandoned_ us. You could have waited another couple of days, at least until we made it to the temple, but you had your priorities and getting to Turin wasn't one of them!'

'Hospital,' Clay said mildly, as Bill stood temporarily stunned.

'What?' Desmond snapped, his voice only a little softer.

'We're in a hospital. Keep your voice down, people are trying to die here.'

Shaun looked up sharply.

'Oh, not her,' Clay clarified with a nod at Rebecca. 'She'll probably live. For a while, anyway.'

'You-'

'Forget it, Shaun,' Desmond interrupted, his voice calmer now, though his breathing was still a little rough. He could tell that Clay had spoken in order to head off the argument, and it had worked.

Bill was visibly struggling to stay upright now, but he managed nonetheless, his eyes flicking back and forth at nothing in particular as he ran over plans in his head. Finally his gaze stopped shifting and he winced, touching the bandages on his face gently with the fingertips of his left hand, before ghosting the palm over the rest of his face. 'I don't see how we'll be able to get them back,' he said quietly.

Desmond didn't either, but he decided to fake an interest in doing so. 'We still have over a month before...'

'You think they'll wait until December 21st to launch that satellite, Desmond?' Bill asked witheringly. 'Now that they know we know about it, Abstergo will have it in orbit as soon as it's functional. The Pieces of Eden will already be being held underneath fifty layers of security, and that's far more than we have the capacity to deal with. There aren't enough Assassins left, and we don't have enough time.'

A depressed silence followed his words, Bill and Shaun staring bleakly at nothing as Desmond and Clay exchanged a glance.

'Well,' Desmond began slowly, suddenly feeling horribly oppressed by the gloomy atmosphere and needing to brighten the outlook a little. He saw Clay widen his eyes and shake his head a little, but ignored the gesture. 'It's not all bad news. At least this means that the Shard will be sent up in the satellite as well. No one will die when the solar flares hit.'

For a moment, no one moved. Then Clay dropped his head silently in defeat, and pulled in a silent breath through his gritted teeth, and Desmond realised the mistake he had made as he reluctantly met his father's eye and spotted the slowly dawning realisation there.

'No,' Bill said, simply and with a slow horror and disgust. He was staring at Desmond as though he didn't even recognise him. 'You didn't.'

Too late, Desmond tried to backtrack. 'Didn't what? What are you talking about?' he asked, but his voice cracked a little as he spoke, and he could feel himself shifting uncomfortably.

'Oh my God,' Shaun breathed, eyebrows shooting upwards. He suddenly dropped into the hospital chair, the legs squeaking on the floor as it skidded a little with the impact. 'You ... you...'

'Idiot,' Clay muttered without much heat, turning away.

'You let them,' Bill stated, sounding almost robotic now. 'You let them take the Pieces of Eden. You let them take Cross.'

'No, he's not that bloody stupid,' Shaun interjected doubtfully, as though he was trying to reassure himself.

Desmond found himself incapable of speaking, and realised that his treacherous face was already betraying his guilt. He turned his head away and tensed his jaw as though waiting for a physical blow.

'Oh, God,' Shaun said. Desmond was glad that he couldn't see him. 'Right. Forgot who I was talking about for a moment. Of _course_ he's that bloody stupid.'

There was no point in responding. The time to explain about Juno and her plans would have been before the debacle at the Westchester safe house, before Desmond handed over the Pieces of Eden. He could try explaining about it now, but the only thing that Bill would care about was the fact that his own son had gone behind his back and betrayed them all to the Templars. If Desmond explained why he had done it, he would have to reveal that it had been on Clay's advice, and Clay would be implicated in the treachery.

Perhaps it was too late to save him anyway. 'You knew about this,' Bill declared suddenly, taking an unsteady step towards Clay.

Desmond blocked his path. 'It was my decision,' he stated firmly.

'Since when do you make decisions?' Bill snapped. 'All I've ever seen you do is run away from responsibility.'

Desmond gritted his teeth, but didn't bother with a defence. He could more or less take any insult that his father decided to throw at him, especially now. 'Look, you can yell at me for a few more hours or we can start to make a plan. If we can't get the Pieces of Eden back in time then we should find a way to disrupt Eye Abstergo, so that after the solar flares are finished we can...'

'Who exactly do you mean by "we", Desmond,' Shaun demanded, standing up and walking over to join them so that Desmond could see the disgust on his face. 'Once that satellite goes up, the Assassins will be the first target. They're going to convert or kill us all, and they certainly won't leave us with enough free will to mount a rebellion.'

'They won't take all of us,' Clay reminded him evenly. 'Some of us-' there was a distinctively patronising tone in his voice '-have enough First Civ DNA that we won't be affected by the Pieces of Eden. There's me, and Desmond...'

'Oh, fantastic!' Shaun spat sarcastically. 'So our fates are going to be left in the hands of a complete nutter and the guy who sold us out in the first place? Quite a wonder team you two are going to make. You should design matching uniforms.'

'It's not just us!' Desmond protested, turning to his father. 'There are others, right? Other Assassins like me and Clay...'

But it was clear that Bill wasn't listening. He was shaking his head as though trying to chase away the distraction of Desmond's words. 'I need to ... I need to call the other leaders,' he said heavily. 'They should know about this.'

He left the room without so much as a backwards glance. Desmond stared after him helplessly, but didn't bother to follow. He had a feeling that any small chance he'd had at finding resolution with his father had now vanished, and tried not to think about the kind of reception Bill would get when he revealed that the Assassins' only chance at survival had been handed over to the Templars by William Miles' own son, while William himself had abandoned the most important post in the Assassin order just so that he could save his wife.

Meanwhile, Rebecca was still unconscious, and Shaun was turning away in disgust. Desmond felt the ache of loneliness in his chest and looked over at Clay.

'Guess we're on our own, huh?' Desmond said.

Clay looked through Desmond with an expression of alarm and said, ' _Chi sei_?'

* * *

Time limped on, slow and agonising.

After two weeks, Rebecca was able to move again and they left the hospital. Bill's bandage came off to reveal his right eye sitting blind and milky amid a mass of scar tissue. He took the loss of half his eyesight with the same blank, numb expression that he seemed to react to everything else these days.

Their scouts kept close tabs on Abstergo, watching hawk-like for any news of the satellite. Entire Assassin teams worked desperately around the clock to find the Pieces of Eden, and managed to narrow their location down to three equally impenetrable sites. Purchase records hinted that Abstergo were indeed planning to launch the satellite much earlier than December 21st - as soon as possible, in fact - but they were having to make adjustments to it. Desmond learned this by eavesdropping, and realised with a deadened flicker of relief that Daniel had convinced Rikkin to send the Shard up along with the Apple.

They were relocated to a safe house in Colorado, one which had an infirmary and a doctor so that Rebecca could get follow-up treatment. Desmond checked on her, but avoided speaking to her if he could manage it. He was poison among the Assassins now - no one wanted to associate with him, and to be seen with him was to be mentally tagged as a traitor by the rest of the sullen, weary Assassins who were living in the safe house.

The only person who didn't seem to care about Desmond's pollutent reputation was Clay, though perhaps it was because lack of space dictated that they share a room in the safe house. Rebecca's doctor had spent five minutes with an unmedicated Clay before signing off a large supply of drugs to help him manage the visions, muttering something about "Animus fever" and shaking his head disapprovingly. A few days after this, Desmond discovered the pills lying unopened under Clay's bed, and confronted him about it the next time he found him lucid.

'What is your problem, huh?' he yelled, shaking the bottle at Clay for emphasis. Desmond realised that he was taking his frustration out on the wrong person, but couldn't help himself. 'I thought you hated the headaches and the craziness, but you won't even take a stupid pill to stop them?'

Clay looked quietly at the floor for a moment, and then took the bottle gently from Desmond's hand. 'I'll take the pills,' he said calmly, tipping one out onto his hand and dropping it onto his tongue, swallowing it dry.

His blood was high, but Desmond also felt a small rush of guilt. 'Look, I'm sorry, Clay, but I really need you to...'

'I know,' Clay said, in the same unreadable tone. 'I know. I'll take the pills.'

The next day he brought a pile of dusty old books back to their room, and explained that they were journals written by past Assassins, ones which might contain clues as to how they might help the others to resist the influence of Eye Abstergo. Their access to the Assassins' central computers had been restricted for obvious reasons, but nonetheless Clay began attempting to hack in, and to find records of the few Assassins who had hybrid DNA.

Perhaps with a little more time he might have been successful. But in the early hours of the morning of November 21st 2012, Desmond found himself being shaken into reluctant wakefulness. He groaned and pushed clumsily at the hand on his shoulder.

'Go away,' he mumbled when his assailant refused to be dissuaded.

'No can do. We gotta move, Desmond. We have to get out of here.'

Desmond opened one eye blearily. 'How come?'

All he could see in the darkness was the gleam of Clay's teeth and eyes, like some kind of sinister Cheshire cat, as he said: 'They've launched Eye Abstergo.'


	13. Chapter 13

**Eye Abstergo - Year One Implementation**

_The following is a record of the guidelines set and agreed upon at the meeting of the Inner Sanctum of the Templar Order, on November 3rd 2012. These guidelines will be reassessed at three-, six- and nine-month intervals dating from the launch of the Eye Abstergo project and any amendments deemed necessary will be made at those times. Emergency amendments may be made at the discretion of Alan Rikkin in his authority as Grand Master of the Templar Order._

Key goals

\- Population control and resource management.

\- Disease control.

\- Elimination of unauthorised crime.

\- Thought monitoring and structuring.

\- Expansion in the fields of science and technology

\- Resistance control.

\- Solar event.

Population Control And Resource Management

Our statisticians have projected that the current expansion of the human race will become unmanageable to a damaging degree in even developed nations within the next fifty years. Considering the changes that will now inevitably take place within that timeframe, we have deemed it necessary to reduce the human population of the planet to a manageable degree (target goal is a reduction of one billion people within 25 years).

The primary method of achieving this will be to plant mental correctives to prevent any unauthorised engagement in unprotected sex. In nations where possible we shall ensure that all sexual encounters - save for the small percentage designated as necessary for stabilising the population decline - will involve at least two forms of contraception. We shall also plant a corrective ensuring that, in the case of both contraceptive methods failing, the foetus will be immediately aborted. Where pregnancy is permitted, it will be restricted to the rate of one child per female in order to ensure proper individual care for each new infant.

In nations where contraception is not yet widely available we will eliminate the sexual urges of the population entirely during Year One, to make time for better resources to be provided.

Disease Control

Since Eye Abstergo admits us unlimited control over global birth rates, we have agreed that disease is an unnecessary factor in population management, and runs contrary to our goal of extending the average human life. Therefore, we have organised a staggered dissolution of all major fast food and snack food companies, accompanied by an implanted corrective in the population to eliminate the desire for unhealthy quantities of carbohydrates, salt and fatty foods. This should greatly reduce the rate of death by heart disease, which is the leading cause of mortality in middle- and high-income nations.

Our other key target is the elimination of carcinogenic substances in all cases where this is possible. The global tobacco industry will be dissolved and a corrective barrier will be placed against nicotine addiction (along with all other forms of drug addiction).

A detailed list of corrective disease control measures has been compiled and attached to this file. For our plans related to controlling sexually transmitted diseases, see the above section on population control.

Elimination of Unauthorised Crime

Crime has long been a chaotic and frustrating disruptor of the Templar cause. In the past it has been necessary for us to insert our agents into various worldwide criminal organisations in order to monitor them and direct a modest flow of criminal economy into our own endeavours. The fact remains, however, that the majority of crime in our modern world is disorganised and unpredictable. There is nothing to be gained from the feckless drug addict who steals televisions from the rich to fund his habit, nor the woman who stabs her husband in a fit of passion, nor the paedophile who rapes his nieces and nephews. These acts are pointless and they only serve to break apart society and perpetuate a threat of total anarchism.

We may deem it fit, in the future, to reintroduce a measured level of crime into society (using a small, disposable nation as the petri dish for such an experiment). For the duration of Year One, however, we will place a corrective measure to suspend all impulses towards criminal activity - be it violence, theft or fraud.

Wars - both international and civil - will also be temporarily suspended as we reorganise world leadership. A meeting will be held on the anniversary of the Eye Abstergo launch to ascertain the worth of reintroducing controlled military disputes.

Thought Monitoring and Structuring

The limits placed upon our control are limited only to the extent that we wish to limit them. However, we have judged that an excessive manipulation of the human mind is counterproductive to fostering creative and progressive thought.

Because of this, thought monitoring and structuring shall primarily be restricted to creating a collective lack of inquisitiveness regarding the massive global changes taking place. The measures we have taken will be alluded to in news media, but met without question or interest by the public. In this way, the transition will appear seamless to all but ourselves.

Expansion in the Fields of Science and Technology

Purpose. This has long been one of the key tenets of the Templar Order. We have always sought power, yes, but with unlimited power at our hands we will find ourselves free to pursue our true goal. We seek knowledge. We seek greater understanding of the universe that we inhabit. We seek to reach out into this universe and find fresh knowledge and purpose. Perhaps, in our search for knowledge and purpose, we will find opportunities to gain greater power.

The human race is magnificent, but it lacks cohesion, efficiency and focus. For centuries we have seen our potential squandered on petty infighting and the fear of moving forward. Having crafted a greater and more purposeful species, we will cast our funding into researching the technology left by Those Who Came Before, as well as creating our own technology and perfecting our knowledge of the sciences. Before we have merely stood counting grains of sand on the beach, but now we will venture forth into the great ocean of knowledge.

A comprehensive list of scientific and academic programs that will be launched after the advent of Year One have been attached to this file.

Resistance control

Lengthy discussion was devoted to the topic of our opposition - specifically the anarcho-political movement known as the Assassins. Several of our members were in favour of exterminating the group altogether, but it was ultimately decided that such an action would be pointless and wasteful.

The Assassin brotherhood will be dissolved. Novice members will be reintegrated into regular society, while medium-level and senior members will be merged into the Templar Order, that we might benefit from their knowledge, expertise, resources and DNA. The majority of those recruited will be placed inside Animi for efficient cataloguing of their memories - both personal and ancestral. Highly skilled Assassins will undergo retraining in the hope that they might one day become active and powerful members of the Templar Order.

We have few concerns in terms of resistance, save for the undergoing investigation into the possible existence of "hybrid" humans, who are theoretically capable of resisting the Pieces of Eden. We have already assessed this potential threat based on past encounters with rumoured hybrids, and consider the danger to be negligible and easily managed.

Solar Event

It was recently brought to our attention that a significant body of solar flares are predicted to impact the planet at the end of 2012. We have incorporated mechanisms into Eye Abstergo that our science teams assure us will safely repel any danger from the solar flares, along with all other forms of extraterrestrial threat.

These guidelines will be put into effect immediately after the launch and activation of Eye Abstergo, which is scheduled to enter regular orbit at 5AM on November 21st 2012.

By the authority of:

Alan Rikkin  
Grand Master Templar  
CEO Abstergo Industries

Witnessed by:

Laetitia England  
Master Templar  
Abstergo Operations

Dr. Warren Vidic  
Master Templar  
Abstergo Research (Animus Project)

Dr. Mitsuko Makamura  
Master Templar  
Abstergo Research (Lineage and Acquisition)

Dr. Alvaro Gramatica  
Master Templar  
Abstergo Research (Future Technology)

Daniel Cross  
Master Templar  
Abstergo Operations

Isabelle Ardant  
Master Templar  
Abstergo Operations (Historical Research)

Otto Schmidt  
Master Templar  
Abstergo Operations (Lineage and Acquisition)

* * *

They stopped at 6AM when Clay needed to - in his own words - "see a man about a horse". They both jumped out of the van and Clay licked his finger and held it up the wind with an expression of intense concentration

'East,' he said authoritatively, keeping his index finger outstretched and using it to point at the barely-visible smudge of sun on the horizon. 'You're going to want to piss to the East.'

'You're a font of wisdom, you know that?' Desmond said, deadpan, as he moved around the side of the vehicle for a measure of privacy. He unzipped and they relieved themselves quietly in the grey beginnings of dawn, the long highway stretching out before them.

They didn't know where they were heading, not really. They hadn't had time to formulate a plan - hadn't expected the news of the satellite launch so soon. While the other Assassins had panicked and prayed and yelled into cell phones, Desmond and Clay had thrown all the supplies that they could find into the back of their old van (Rebecca's bloodstain was still faintly visible on the floor) and fled for the city borders. Once Eye Abstergo was activated, the Assassins could no longer be relied upon as allies, for they would surely be Abstergo's first target.

As he zipped and buckled, Desmond reiterated the hollow self-reassurance that the Templars would not simply kill the remaining Assassins. Why kill them, when they already had complete control of their minds? His father, Rebecca, Shaun - they might be questioned, put inside Abstergo Animi, or even recruited, but they would live. That was all that mattered.

He climbed back into the driver's seat and glanced over in time to see Clay shake himself off and tuck himself away before tugging his door open to retake his place in the passenger seat. Desmond did not start the engine. He stared up through the windshield at the solid, pale grey murk of the sky.

After a pause he said, 'So that's it? The satellite's up now?'

'Were you expecting an ominous crack of thunder or something?'

Desmond considered this for a moment, and wondered if there was some truth to it. Perhaps he had been expecting some kind of physical sign of the Templar takeover. It seemed odd that it should have happened so quietly. He wondered whether the symptoms were already starting to manifest.

He grasped the steering wheel until the knuckles on both hands went white. Then he used the leverage to slam his head forward violently into the centre of the wheel.

The van's horn blared, shockingly loud in the still air.

After a second or so of that painfully satisfying sound, Desmond relaxed the muscles in his neck and eased the pressure enough that the horn bleated away into silence, though he left his head and hands where they were for a moment.

'Feel better?' Clay inquired casually.

'Actually, yeah.' Desmond pushed himself back into his seat, eyes only half-open, a painful throbbing in his forehead where it had impacted against the steering wheel. He would probably end up with a lump there, and a nasty bruise to match it, but it was worth it for the temporary novocaine of the endorphin rush. 'It's over, isn't it?' he stated dully. 'The Templars won. We lost. It's all done.'

'That's a pretty defeatist attitude.'

A hollow, ugly laugh burst shortly out of Desmond without his permission. 'We _are_ defeated. That's what this is, Clay. This is about as defeated as it's possible to get.' He swiped a hand over his aching forehead and hot face, and found that his fingers were shaking.

'Cheer up,' Clay said. 'Things couldn't possibly be any worse.'

A short silence followed the statement. Desmond turned his head slowly and pinned Clay down with a mix of frustration and disbelief.

'What?' Clay asked innocently.

'I think you got that platitude wrong.'

'Who said anything about a platitude? We're royally fucked from all sides. The Assassins are gone, the world is being controlled by a pack of twisted megalomaniacs, we only have enough food and gas to get us through a week or two at most and after that we're going to have to start scrounging around Templartopia to survive. At which point we'll almost certainly end up getting caught and put inside an Animus chamber at Abstergo for the rest of our natural lives.'

Desmond stared at him open-mouthed for a moment, and then scowled. 'You think we can't survive this? You think those years of training were all for nothing?'

Clay shrugged. 'I...'

'I don't know about you, Clay, but I'm not going to be a fucking pushover. If Abstergo want me they're going to have to make me sit still first.' He sat forward in the seat and turned the keys in the ignition with a jerk, starting the engine. 'And I don't plan on sitting still.'

He glared straight ahead as he pulled out onto the highway again, but out of the corner of his eye he caught Clay's slight grin as the other Assassin murmured, 'That's the spirit,' and couldn't help but wonder if he'd just been thoroughly manipulated into having a positive outlook.

Desmond kept his expression moody for a few moments, but quickly remembered that there was rarely any point in getting annoyed with Clay, who seemed to be impervious to even the harshest criticism. Besides, they were all that each other had now. Desmond had had friends in New York, but not the kind of friends that he could go to when he was on the run, and the only family he had left were probably both now prisoners of Abstergo. He chewed anxiously on the inside of the cheek, and tensed as a car approached them from the other direction. A family: sleepy-looking couple in the front and a trio of fighting children in the back seats, none of them looking like they were slaves of an evil corporation. What had changed, in the scant few hours since Eye Abstergo had begun working its influence?

'Could you turn the radio on?' he asked Clay.

He did so, and they were met with the morning weather report from a local news station. It was going to be cloudy with occasional showers of rain. Clay twiddled with the dial and after a few seconds of scratchy static a pop song bloomed into clarity. Desmond recognised the singer, but not that song. In his bartender days (they seemed an age away now, they in reality it had only been a couple of months since his last shift at Bad Weather) he had always known the lyrics to each now popular song within days of it being released, and would croon the tunes under his breath whilst casting slow glances at the flirtatious women who populated the bar stools. Not so long ago he had begun to feel restless in his work, but now he wished to have those simpler days back. Mixing a Bloody Mary might not be fulfilling work, but it was something that he knew he was good at. Saving the world? Sort of outside his skill set.

The song ended and the DJ cut in, cheery and obviously pepped up on coffee, his speech bearing all the rhythms of a carnival patter. He didn't sound like someone who had been enslaved and brainwashed. At least, now more than radio DJs usually did.

Clay fiddled with the dial again, taking them to a country music station. He pulled a face and twiddled again, finding more pop music. He kept turning the dial and seemed to catch a hint of a station he liked, spending a good few minutes filling the van with the grating sound of static again before finally giving up and continuing on his journey through the wavelengths. The next station was playing a classic rock song, which Clay listened to dutifully until it ended, before reaching for the dial again.

'Oh my God,' Desmond groaned, pulling a face.

'What?'

'You're one of _those_ people.'

'What people?'

'Station hoppers. Just pick a damn radio station and leave it.'

'But then we might not be getting the best music.'

'I think we have bigger problems right now, Clay!'

'Fine,' Clay said, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms with an air of petulance.

They listened to a triple-bill of Journey songs before a commercial break came on. Desmond was searching the passing road signs for the next exit, trying to look for destinations that might offer a suitable place for them to stop running and recollect themselves, when Clay checked his watch and said, 'I think you should let me drive for a bit.'

'Huh?' Desmond confusedly tried to work out what had brought this suggestion on. 'I've only been driving for a few hours, I'm fine to carry on.'

'You're really not,' Clay said mysteriously.

'Are you disrespecting my driving skills?'

'Desmond...'

'I'm a good driver, and it's not like there's a lot of stuff to crash into out here...'

'Desmond, _stop the fucking van_.'

The sharp, almost panicky tone to Clay's voice made Desmond slam the breaks on automatically, the lurch of the sudden stop throwing them both forwards a little. 'What's wrong with you?' Desmond demanded angrily.

'I want to drive.'

Desmond hesitated, but realised that there was no tactical way to phrase his next words. 'Pardon me if I don't think that's a good idea, Mr Psychotic Episode.'

Clay smiled briefly, seemingly more relaxed now that they were no longer in motion. 'I'm fine. The pills are working, and I can keep the bleeding effect under control so long as I stay on them. If I really feel like I'm about to lose it, I'll put on the brakes and you can take over again.'

'OK,' Desmond said slowly. 'But that doesn't explain why you want to drive so badly.'

Deeply confused, he stared into Clay's face for clues, and Clay looked back at him searchingly, his blue eyes seeming to penetrate Desmond's very skin. They had lost the edge of madness that Desmond had first seen in them back at the hospital in Italy, but their intensity had not died away, and matching Clay's gaze remained a somewhat unnerving experience.

'You've forgotten, haven't you?' Clay concluded at last. 'Understandable. Might even be for the best.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Listen to me, Desmond.' Clay laid his hand gently on Desmond's arm, the one that was hovering over the gear stick, and looked at him with uncharacteristic sincerity. 'The rest of the Assassins are gone, it's just the two of us. You're all that I've got left, and I'm all that you've got left, and between us we're the only hope that humanity has left. We need to trust each other or we're not going to make it, OK?' He took a deep breath before continuing. 'So. Do you trust me, Desmond?'

It was the wrong time to ask such a question, since it seemed obvious that Clay was holding back some kind of information. And yet ... Clay had gone with Desmond to the temple beneath the Winter Palace, and had ventured beneath the floors despite his obvious fear, and had helped Desmond in the battle with Daniel Cross. If it wasn't for Clay, Desmond would never have known about Juno's plans, and they would have gone on to Turin with no idea that they were walking into a trap. Clay had helped Desmond make the hardest decision of his life, had been his sole confidant for the agony of that decision, and had taken the burden of breaking the news to the others. Now that all the other Assassins were gone, Clay was still here, and Desmond realised that he hadn't trusted anyone this implicitly since...

As he failed to respond, Desmond saw a profound sadness flicker in Clay's eyes. 'You're thinking about Lucy, aren't you?' he observed.

There was little point in denying it. 'Depending on other people hasn't always worked out well for me.'

'She betrayed me as well, Desmond. Oh, it killed her to do it, but she did it anyway.'

'Then why are you so eager to trust _me_?' Desmond asked, desperately confused.

Clay shrugged and gave a small, pained smile. 'It's easy when there's nothing at stake. What more could you do to me, that hasn't been done already?'

Desmond let the awfulness of that sink in for a moment. Then he nodded, briskly, and opened his door, hearing Clay doing the same on the other side. They both walked around the front of the van and switched places, Clay climbing into the driver's seat.

'Don't worry,' he reassured, putting on his seatbelt. 'I used to drive this exact same model when I worked for my Dad. I'll probably get us there faster.'

'Get us where?'

'Hey, you're in the navigator's seat.'

Desmond grinned despite himself, despite everything, and pointed at the nearest road sign. 'There's a small town about twenty miles off the next exit. We can set up camp in the woods nearby and try to watch for a bit, see how the new regime affects people's behaviour, maybe steal a newspaper.' When Clay looked underwhelmed by this plan, Desmond shrugged defensively. 'If you've got a better plan then let's hear it.'

'No, your plan is fine. We hole up outside Hicksville. Nice and low-key. Twenty miles, you say?'

'Yeah.'

Clay nodded, an odd expression on his face, and gripped the wheel. Desmond had to admit that Clay seemed a lot more comfortable with the van than he himself had been, and they journeyed smoothly for several minutes, taking the exit in the direction of the small town. AC/DC belted out at them from the radio, and Clay started humming along absent-mindedly.

'So,' Desmond said carefully. 'Are you going to tell me why you wanted to take the wheel?'

'No,' Clay replied. His gaze kept occasionally flicking to something on the dashboard. Desmond wondered if he was worried about the fuel situation, but when he looked himself he saw that the gas tank was still over halfway full. Besides, they had quite a few spare cans in the back.

'Why not?'

'It's better if you don't know. The anticipation will just make it worse.'

'What do you mean, anticip-?'

That was when it happened. AC/DC screamed out their chorus and something huge and terrible stabbed through Desmond's body, setting every nerve ending alive and on fire, even his fingertips convulsing and burning, his limbs out of his control, his head thrown back and the tendons in his neck standing out as he tried and failed to draw breath; his very lungs betraying him and spasming and his heart feeling as though it would explode through his chest.

Then, quite suddenly, it all stopped. The pain was gone. Desmond could not even feel the seat beneath him, nor hear his heart beating, nor feel the rush of air into his body as he finally drew breath. His body had become a separate entity and his mind drifted away from it - blissfully empty and unanchored by pain or worry. He could hear Clay speaking, but Desmond's eyes drifted shut of their own accord and then there was nothing. No sight, nor sound, nor feeling. Nothing left at all.


	14. Chapter 14

**November 22nd 2012**

Consciousness returned by degrees, though it was not so much consciousness as it was a simple return to his body from some other place. With a great exertion of effort, Desmond lifted his eyelids, and rolled his dry eyeballs around in his skull. It seemed to be night, pale moonlight filtering into the van through the front windshield with the crooked bars of tree branch shadows splayed across the seats. Desmond was lying on his side in the back of the van, a sleeping bag beneath him and blankets over him; a chill in the air but a warmth at his back.

He tried to move his arm, and found that he couldn't. He expended a huge effort and managed to twitch his fingers, barely able to feel the brush of the blanket against them. His legs were like dead weights attached to his torso and nothing worked, nothing would move. Panicking, Desmond managed to open his mouth a little and forced out a weak, animalistic grunt. He did his best to drop his tongue down out of the way and made another attempt, this one a low wail.

The warmth at his back mumbled and stirred and shifted. Desmond made his desperate, wordless sound again and there was a scuffing of movement, then a hand on his shoulder.

'You awake, Desmond? Try to take it easy.' Desmond couldn't turn his head, but he recognised Clay's voice.

Clay.

The _bastard_. He'd demanded Desmond's trust and then immediately betrayed it! Oh God, what had he done? What was he planning to do next? Desmond tried to struggle, to send messages to his body to start moving, to fight back against the figure looming over him, but the only results he managed were a few feeble spasmodic twitches.

His eyes must have been snapping from one side to the other in distress, because Clay made a shushing sound, patting Desmond on the shoulder before crawling away and fiddling with something at the other end of the van. He returned a moment later and, realising that Desmond couldn't move his head, reached down to show a small, thin metal rod that was held between two fingertips.

'Remember this?' he asked playfully.

Desmond stared at the little piece of metal in confusion for a moment, and then realised what it was and groaned - half in relief, half in humiliation. Of course, it was the implant. That explained why Clay had been keeping such a close eye on the time and their mileage, and why he had insisted on taking the wheel. He must have known that they were about to get out of range, and that the implant would automatically be triggered, and he hadn't...

'Sorry I didn't tell you,' Clay said, as though reading Desmond's mind. 'I knew it was going to have to come out, now that the Templars have control of the Assassins, and I also knew that we forgot to bring any anaesthetic. I had to fiddle around with a sharp blade pretty close to your spinal cord to remove the implant, and I had a choice between waiting until it temporarily paralysed you, or trying to get it out without any kind of painkillers and risk paralysing you permanently. Figured you'd prefer it this way.'

The paralysis was still firmly present, but Desmond tried twitching his fingers again and now found that he could just about curl them into a fist. Improving, then. He gave what he hoped sounded like a grunt of gratitude.

'You're welcome,' Clay said, grinning audibly. 'I've deactivated the tracker but we'll dump it before we move on anyway. Can't be too careful, right?' He checked his watch. 'You should have most of your motor functions back within a few hours. I'd recommend trying to get some more sleep until then. That's what I'm going to do.'

With that, he disappeared from Desmond's line of vision and there was the soft rustling sound of him settling back down on the floor of the van. His breathing deepened into slower patterns after only a few minutes, but Desmond was wide awake and therefore simply waited - time drifting by immeasurably - as he gradually regained feeling and movement. The first sensation he felt was an ache on the back of his neck, where Clay had sliced into his skin and removed the implant. Then Desmond found that he could loosely roll his body around, and flopped onto his back, groaning gently as the pressure on his shoulder was relieved and taking note of the numerous aches and pains around his body.

As he recollected the sensations of being shocked by the implant, he felt his temper building. His own father had stuck a device in him that had more or less induced a seizure. The "discomfort" mentioned by his doctor had been agonising, and before passing out Desmond had felt every muscle in his body cramping up in hideous contractions. If he'd been driving the van then he would most probably have been killed when he lost control of his body. Had Bill known how severe the shock would be?

It wasn't as though Desmond could ask him now. It wasn't as though Bill could be held accountable.

Desmond's facial muscles began responding again a short while later, but a long time passed before he next used them to smile.

* * *

**December 4th 2012**

Clay was missing.

 _He's not missing_ , Desmond scolded himself, trying and failing to choke down his fear and anxiety as he stood on the roof of the van, using it as a vantage point. _He's just ... not here_.

Desmond had gone newspaper-scrounging, and Clay had been gone when he got back. They were in Iowa now, always moving, stopping briefly only to steal clues from nearby settlements whilst avoiding direct contact with other people. The news in the paper had been ... troubling, though not in the way he had expected, and now there was this further worry piled on top of his confusion as to what the news might mean.

When he finally figured out the easiest way to find Clay, Desmond was embarrassed by his own slowness. He jumped down to the ground and closed his eyes, carefully prodding around in his own brain until he found the switch that triggered Eagle Vision, feeling the shift in his consciousness before he even opened his eyes again.

Eagle Vision was much weirder out in the open like this; the clouds overhead seemed to speed up and were dark and vaguely threatening. The tall, yellow grass in the field on one side of the highway appeared to sway slower in the breeze, each blade suddenly more distinct. The horizon, however, darkened to near-invisibility. Desmond shook off the unpleasant feelings associated with Eagle Vision and walked around to the back of the van.

He found Clay there, or at least a shade of Clay. His face was a little blurred, meaning that the imprint must be at least half an hour old, but he was standing bolt upright and staring ahead with tension evident in his body language. Without warning, the shade of Clay suddenly started walking briskly off the road and into the trees that lined the other side of it, his ghostly feet leaving a distinct blue trail as he walked.

Desmond followed Ghost-Clay through the trees, watching in fascination as wisps of him trailed behind on branches where his clothes caught on them. At one point he bounced off a tree trunk as though he had not seen it, and left behind a blue smear on the bark even as he regained his balance and continued his journey. His partially-transparent head whipped from side to side as he reached the bank of a small stream, and suddenly he ducked violently to avoid some invisible object. Desmond's heart began thudding sharply in this chest as he watched the ethereal figure cowering, wondering if Clay had merely been hallucinating, or whether someone had really attacked him. But there were no tell-tale traces of blood on the ground, and Ghost-Clay soon recovered and started running. His feet hit the water of the stream without disturbing it, and Desmond followed him.

As he tracked the spectre, his head starting to ache from keeping Eagle Vision open for so long, Desmond cursed himself for leaving Clay on his own. He had begun to take it for granted that his travelling companion ( _friend_ , Desmond mentally corrected himself, _admit it - you think of him as a friend now_ ) was holding things together so much better than he had when they'd first rescued him from the hospital. He was maybe even holding things together better than Desmond himself; it was Clay who generally decided which direction they would head in next, and who had found the scant few clues that they'd managed to piece together from the Assassins' journals. When in his element, it quickly became apparent that Clay was fiercely intelligent and a voracious researcher with an uncanny eye for patterns. Just having him around gave Desmond hope that maybe, just maybe, they could recover from this disaster.

Desmond had been stupidly complacent. He should have kept his eyes open for warning signs. He shouldn't have taken Clay's terse reply of "fine" at face value when he'd asked how Clay was dealing with the bleeding effect and the heavy medication regime. But Desmond had needed Clay to be fine, and this had blinded him to the possibility that he might not be.

The trees ended at a low fence marking the edge of farmland, and Desmond's heart sank as he saw the buildings in the distance. Ghost-Clay, still running, planted one hand on the uppermost panel of the fence and vaulted cleanly over it, leaving behind a single blue handprint. Desmond mimicked the move perfectly and continued to race after the echo that his friend had left behind.

The cows in the field looked up warily as Desmond raced past them, jaws pausing the churn of cud in their mouths, but he ignored them and focused only on following Clay's trail. The nearest building was an old, red barn in the south-west corner of the farm's main yard, and Desmond watched with an uneasy feeling as Clay's shade hit the wall running and carried right on up, smoothly grabbing hand- and footholds to haul himself up the wooden panelling, trailing ghostly blue scuff-marks.

Desmond paused only for a short beat before following the path up the side of the barn, his head now pounding with the continued pressure of so much sensory input. He finally reached the roof of the barn and climbed up, balancing on the ridge flashing and staring ahead in relief as he saw Clay - the real Clay - crouched at the other end of the barn and glowing solidly. The running ghost crossed the roof and crouched down also, merging seamlessly with the present, and Desmond dropped the Eagle Vision with a sigh.

The relief only lasted for a moment, however, for Clay stood up sharply with intent written all over him. His left arm flexed, despite the fact that he wasn't wearing a wrist-blade, and he tensed his muscles ready for a deadly leap on some poor victim below. Desmond swore under his breath and raced across the ridge, an arm outstretched, grabbing hold of the back of Clay's shirt just in time and dragging the delusional Assassin backwards just before he launched himself off the roof.

Clay staggered and flailed and thrashed, and Desmond tried vainly to keep his balance for a few seconds before the inevitable happened and they both landed on the slope of the roof, rolling over and over down until they hit the edge and tumbled to the ground in an arc, landing with great fortune in tall, soft grass.

'Hey!' someone yelled from the front of the barn. 'What was that? Somebody messin' around up there?'

Desmond rolled over in the grass and grabbed Clay before he had a chance to escape, noting as he did so that there were incredibly fine lines glowing in gold at the writhing man's temple. Remembering the technique which had worked at the Winter Palace, he clamped one hand over Clay's mouth and the other over his eyes, tangling their legs together to keep Clay pinned. After a couple more convulsions, the trapped Assassin fell still.

The person who had called out could be heard pacing around in front of the barn, and Desmond tensed fearfully as he heard them walk a little way towards them, praising the grass for offering them cover. Finally, the farmhand grumbled and gave up, his footsteps fading as he walked back across the yard.

When he was a good distance away, Desmond loosened his hold on Clay and whispered, 'Anyone home?'

Clay paused for a few seconds, apparently collecting himself, before replying in a despondent tone, 'I landed on my ass.'

'My heart bleeds for you. What year is it?'

Another pause, then: '2012.'

'Good boy. Let's get out of here.'

They journeyed back to the van in near-silence, Desmond watching Clay cautiously out of the corner of his eye for any signs of the bleeding effect. More than anything, Clay simply looked stunned and a little unnerved by the fact that he'd been able to travel so far whilst under its influence.

When they got back, Clay opened the back doors of the van and sat down with his feet hanging off the edge, toes scraping a little against the asphalt. Desmond sat down beside him.

'Thanks,' Clay said. His eyes were downcast and his fingers were trembling a little as he twisted them in his lap.

'So. You stopped taking your pills.'

'I thought...' Clay sighed miserably. 'I hoped I wouldn't need them any more. It's been so long since I last used the Animus. I hoped that the bleeding effect might have worn off by now.'

'Well clearly you were right,' Desmond quipped sarcastically.

Clay shrugged. 'It's not as bad as it was back at the hospital but it's ... it's still pretty bad.'

'Now really isn't a good time to be experimenting like this, Clay.'

'I'm going to have to sooner or later.' Clay looked up and met Desmond's eye. 'I'm running out of pills,' he stated bluntly.

Desmond's heart sank. 'How many...?'

'I've got enough to last me another few weeks if I only take one dose every day. But every time I take a pill it means that there's one less pill left to take, and you know who produces these pills.'

Desmond hadn't checked the labels, but he could hazard a guess. 'Abstergo.'

'Exactly. I'm worried that I'm becoming dependent on the anti-psychotics to keep the visions suppressed. What if they're stopping me from becoming strong enough to fight off the bleeding effect by myself?'

There was an odd disconnect between the sentiment of the words and the tone used to express them. Clay was describing a very basic and powerful fear, something that had obviously been bothering him for a while now, but he was talking about it in a calm, even offhand manner. Desmond frowned and looked closer: at the muscle standing out in Clay's jaw and the vein in his temple, and with a sinking feeling began to realise that this air of indifference was simply an act being put on for this benefit.

'Why didn't you tell me any of this?' he asked softly.

Clay flinched almost imperceptibly and looked ahead at the ground. 'We've got enough problems right now. My little Dateline crisis isn't important in the grand scheme of things.'

'It is important,' Desmond insisted, more fiercely than he had intended. 'For God's sake, Clay, we've had plenty of time. Why didn't you just tell me...?'

' _I didn't want you to know!_ ' Clay yelled, abruptly and furiously. It was the first time that Desmond had heard Clay really shouting outside of the bleeding effect, and he could do little more than stare as Clay sucked in a huge, ragged breath that shook his entire body. He covered his eyes with one hand, an echo of what Desmond had done to him, and sat like that for a moment, his body wracked with aborted sobs. When he finally took his hand away and glared at Desmond, the skin around his eyes was flushed and damp.

'I used to fucking hate you,' he revealed, his voice trembling. 'Before I even met you, I fucking despised you and everything that you stood for. I ... I threw my entire life away on this vague promise that it would end up meaning something important, and then at the end of it all I was just this total wreck of a person with nothing left, and that's when I found out that I wasn't important at all. I was just like this scrap of paper with a message written on it, to be handed to the _real_ saviour of the world. And I found out your name and I found out that you were Bill's son and I fucking hated you and I thought about how much I hated you as I cut myself open, and I died hating you. Only I couldn't even do that right because they brought me back, not all of me, just enough of me that I could still feel _pain_ and _torment_ and _misery_.'

Clay paused to gasp for breath, but he wasn't finished telling his story yet.

'Then you rescued me. You came to the hospital and you rescued me and I guess I'd wasted so much energy on hating you that to actually meet you at last ... it grounded me. I felt real again, like a real person. Only I didn't hate you. I couldn't force myself to hate you once I'd met you, because I realised that you were nothing like what I'd built you up to be. You were a real person too, with feelings and failings and frustrations, and you'd been used just like I had but you hadn't let it break you and I was so ... so fucking ashamed and angry at myself. And ever since then I've been trying to redeem myself by being there for you, and supporting you, and helping you, and making out like I was so cool with everything and ... and...'

He sniffed and wiped a hand over his eyes, and then looked back at Desmond with a watery grin. 'But this is the truth, what you see right here. I'm not brave and I'm not smart and I'm not a hero. I'm a complete and utter mess and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, that you got stuck with me at the end of all this. You deserved better.'

While Desmond was still too stunned to respond, Clay jumped down from the back of the van and swiped a hand over his eyes again. 'OK,' he said, in an unconvincing attempt at his normal sarcastic drawl. 'Now that I'm done acting like a complete girl...'

Desmond stood up as well, and put a hand on Clay's shoulder before the other man had a chance to walk away. 'Come here,' he murmured, pulling Clay close, wrapping his arms around him in a way that felt far more natural than when he had done this to his father. Clay stayed tensed for a moment, his arms stiff at his sides, and then his body seemed to sag and he reached up to hold onto Desmond's shoulders, burying his face gratefully into the side of Desmond's neck, his tears hot on Desmond's skin.

'I'm sorry,' Clay whispered. 'It's ... You shouldn't listen to me. It's just because I'm coming down from the drugs. I'll be fine in a bit...'

'Don't,' Desmond interrupted gently, fighting down the urge to start crying himself. 'I'm glad you told me. Jesus, Clay, I'm your friend, you don't have to hide all this from me.' He pulled away a little and planted his palms on either side of Clay's head to hold him still, gazing at him agitatedly. 'You should have told me sooner, so that I could have told you that none of that crap is true. You _are_ brave, and smart, and strong. You _are_ a hero, Clay. I don't know what I would have done without you...'

But Clay was squirming away, embarrassed. 'Look, don't remind me. All that self-pity crap was just ... ugh. I wasn't fishing for compliments, Des, I was just upset because of what happened today and ... can we forget it? Please?' he begged.

In response, Desmond let one hand drop to his side, but ran the other down over Clay's neck and shoulder and arm before finally gripping the back of his hand gently and lifting the arm. Clay winced as Desmond rolled up the long sleeve of his shirt, but didn't pull away.

The scar tissue on the inside of Clay's forearm had paled from the pink it had been back at the mental hospital to a very pale, almost translucent shade of white. The skin visibly dipped where entire chunks of flesh had been removed, but the scar was raised at the edges. Desmond ran his thumb over it, feeling the texture of it, feeling Clay tremble a little at the raw intimacy of the action.

'No,' Desmond replied firmly. 'I'm not going to forget it. Because this is what happens when you feel like you don't have a way out, and you should never have to feel like that. You're the one who deserves better than what you got. So the next time you get frustrated or angry or sad, I want you to tell me about it. Hell, you can even punch me if it makes you feel better, but don't just bottle it all away because you think I can't handle it.'

'I won't,' Clay promised, his eyes still downcast. 'But I really need to ... I just need to take my pills, OK?'

Desmond released him. 'Yeah, alright.' He felt a little embarrassed at his own outburst now, and he tried to think of something practical that they could do to move past the moment. 'Look, we shouldn't stay here much longer. We seriously need to find somewhere safe where we can hide out for a while, maybe restock our supplies and do some research without having to worry about being caught by traffic cops. Can you think of anywhere we can go?'

Clay swallowed hard, taking a moment to collect himself before he looked Desmond in the eye. 'Yeah,' he breathed, his expression open and honest weary. 'I know where I want us to go next.'

'Great. Where?'

'I want to go home.'


	15. Chapter 15

**December 6th 2012**

'Heh.'

Desmond blinked and looked over at Clay in surprise, temporarily distracted from the agitation of being stuck at a red traffic light. 'What's funny?' he asked.

Clay pointed out of the window at a fairly modern-looking leisure centre on the other side of the road. 'I built that,' he explained, sounding a little amazed.

Desmond raised his eyebrows. 'Wow. Must have taken you a while.'

Clay laughed. 'Not the whole thing. I worked construction on weekends while I was in high school, and that was one of the first projects I worked on. That would have been around ... the late nineties. After we dug out the swimming pool we used to use it as a kind of breakroom. Eat our lunch in there, play games of soccer.' His eyes roved over the building, lost in memory. 'One time, when it was nearly finished, I took a tumble off the roof and twisted my ankle. Not so much a leap of faith as a fall of stupidity.'

A horn blasted angrily through the air, making them both jump, and Desmond realised he had been sitting at a green traffic light for a few seconds. He hurredly struggled to put the van into the right gear and took off again with a slight screech of tyres.

'Sorry,' Clay said distantly. 'Didn't mean to distract you. It's just weird, being back here.'

Following his outburst a couple of days ago, Clay had been even more closed-off and flippant than usual, but now that the initial tension had eased away he was seeming a lot more relaxed and open around Desmond. He'd even talked a bit about his childhood, described the strained relationship he'd had with his father and the drunken note his mother had scribbled to him before she had left for good. He had made brief allusions to a therapist but quickly gone tight-lipped when Desmond had tried to get further details out of him with regards to this.

'Do you think your dad will be OK with both of us staying?' he asked tentatively. 'I mean, you haven't seen him in a while.'

'If it wasn't for me he wouldn't have been able to pay off the mortgage on the house. It's my home as much as it is his,' Clay replied, though not without a trace of uncertainty. 'Besides, he's not all that bad. He can be kind of ... abrasive, but that's just a generational thing. His dad - my grandpa - used to beat him with a leather belt when he was a kid, but Dad never laid a hand on me.' Now he spoke thoughtfully, introspectively, as though he were on a psychiatrist's couch once more. 'I sometimes think that's the only way to get an idea of what someone's really like, by looking at how he treats people who are weaker than him. Dad might have bossed me about, but he never hit me.'

Desmond shifted uncomfortably in his seat, suddenly feeling as though the scar on his mouth was itching. 'How much farther is it?' he asked, by way of changing the subject.

'About a couple more miles, on the outskirts of town. But we shouldn't stop right outside my house in case the Templars are looking for this van.' He pointed at a road sign up ahead. 'Look, there's an underground parking garage coming up on the left. We could leave the van there and walk the rest of the way.'

Thankfully the garage had an automated ticketing machine, and was far enough outside of the town that there were very few people around. Desmond parked the van - a little sloppily, but it would do - and turned the engine off, relieved to be away from open air at last. He watched in the wing mirror as a middle-aged women put shopping bags in the trunk of her car whilst talking on her cell phone and frowned, the niggling worry that had been eating at him rearing its head again.

'We can come back for the research materials later, once we're settled in,' Clay mused. 'There's a basement that we could work out of.'

'Yeah,' Desmond affirmed unenthusiastically.

'Don't get too excited about it,' Clay joked, but his levity soon dissipated at the look on Desmond's face. 'What's the matter?'

There was little point in lying now, and it would be unfair to do so considering that Desmond had insisted on Clay being honest with him. He rubbed at his forehead awkwardly and then sighed, resting his head back against the seat. 'It's just that ... sometimes I wonder whether we're doing the right thing.'

Clay waited for Desmond to continue and, when he didn't, prompted, 'You're going to have to be more specific. Are you talking about the parking spot...'

'I mean this whole "saving the world" jag.'

Clay raised his eyebrows as Desmond's hands fell back into his lap. 'Wow. It must be serious if you're using air quotes. You think there's something wrong with saving the world?'

'Saving it from what?'' Desmond burst out, grabbing an old newspaper from behind the seat and waving it pointedly. 'From world peace? From a complete end to all crime? From people being totally cured of drug addiction? From record low rates of STDs? I mean, from everything I've ever been told about the Templars I didn't exactly expect their version of world domination to be this ... utopian.'

Ckay was quiet for a few moments, and Desmond galnced over nervously to find that his friend was staring straight ahead, his guard obviously back up. At last, Clay responded, 'None of it is by choice, though, is it? Democracy and liberty are dead now, even if people still have the illusion of them.'

'Maybe it's better this way,' Desmond suggested daringly. He couldn't tell if he was just playing devil's advocate to test Clay's reactions, or if this was really how he felt. 'I mean, let's face it - human beings make stupid-ass decisions every single day. Give the average person nine right choices and one wrong choice, and nine times out of ten he'll pick the wrong choice out of pure spite. People are selfish, and short-sighted and ... and idiotic. Look at us!' He gestured at Clay, then at himself. 'Everything in the world is getting better and we're doing our level best to destroy it all, just because of our own personal philosophy. Hell, it's not even my personal philosophy, it's my dad's.' He pressed his lips together defiantly, breathing through his nose and staring at Clay, waiting for a response.

Clay simply looked weary. 'What do you want from me, Desmond?' he asked. 'Do you want me to remind you why we're doing this? Do you want me make a case for fighting the Templars?'

'Yeah, I would. That's what I'd like you to do.'

'Well I'm not going to,' Clay stated bluntly, a rising inflection in his voice hinting at frustration bubbling beneath the surface. 'You know why we're doing this, Desmond, and you're either in with both feet or you're out altogether. We barely had a snowball's chance in hell at beating the Templars when we were fully dedicated to it, and if you start wavering then we might as well not bother at all.' His piercing gaze was in full effect now, and Desmond felt an urge to cower away from it. 'What it comes down to is this: do you trust Alan Rikkin with the fate of every human on the planet? Can we rely on Templar altruism to keep everything from going to shit once the honeymoon period is over?'

Desmond sighed, half in despair and half in relief. 'Thanks,' he said sincerely. 'That's what I needed to hear.'

'So we're doing this?'

 _I guess_ , was what Desmond wanted to say. But that wasn't a very "in-with-both-feet" reply so instead he agreed, 'We're doing this.'

'Good.'

Desmond glanced up nervously at the security cameras as they left the van and made their way back to the street, wishing that he had thought to wear his hooded jacket for this excursion. Clay, by contrast, was too absorbed with the return to his home town to express much discomfort. He looked around at grocery stores and parks as they passed them, clearly lost in his own thoughts.

'Is it weird, being back here?' Desmond asked. 'How long has it been?'

'Four years, practically to the day. Last time I visited was at Christmas and it was ... awkward.' Clay pulled a face but didn't elaborate on what had made the trip so unpleasant. 'Last time I spoke to my dad must have been over two years ago, on the phone.'

'He's probably been worried about you.'

'Mmm.' Clay was still looking around. 'My old elementary school is coming up on the left,' he announced. 'My dad said he was working on an extension for it a while ago. It'll be cool to see what it looks like now.' He hesitated, and glanced over at Desmond almost bashfully.

'What is it?' Desmond prompted, after they had gone several paces in silence.

'Desmond, look...' Clay swallowed nervously. 'You said that if there was anything I needed to get off my chest, anything I needed to tell you, then I should just do it.'

'Yeah, of course.' Desmond realised that he probably sounded a little too eager, but it was only because he did not want to end up having to rescue Clay from another delusional rampage, or come back to the van one day to find him bleeding out on the ground.

Clay have a short nod, and stopped walking, taking hold of Desmond's shoulder to still him. He took a deep breath, turning so that he and Desmond were face to face, lifted his eyes and got as far as, 'I wanted to tell you...' before his eyes lost focus and he stiffened in sudden fear.

Presuming it was the bleeding effect taking hold, Desmond raised a hand and clicked his fingers in front of Clay's face. 'Come on, stay with me. It's 2012...'

'No, I know,' Clay interrupted huskily, his eyes still fixed at a point somewhere over Desmond's shoulder. He jerked his chin almost imperceptibly and said, 'Look, behind you.'

With a growing sense of unease, Desmond turned slowly on the spot to look in the direction that Clay had indicated, and what he saw was so creepy that he could have sworn he felt his balls try to climb up inside his body. 'Oh, Christ,' he muttered, not daring to speak too loudly. 'What the fuck?'

They had been passing Clay's old elementary school, green-painted railings rising up over their heads to divide the playground from the sidewalk. It must have been the lunchbreak, because it seemed as though half the school - children of all ages between six and eleven, and at least a couple of hundred of them in total - were outside. There was a thud-thud-thud- _thudthudthud_ sound as a forgotten basketball bounced and then rolled away across the asphalt, and the slapping of a jump-rope against the ground had stopped abruptly. An eerie silence had fallen across the entire street where there should have been the sound of kids laughing and screeching as they made the most of their hour of freedom.

None of them were playing or talking. They were all standing bolt upright - a sea of young faces all looking in the same direction. Every single child in the playground was staring at Clay and Desmond with cold, hard eyes.

'Uh, you ever see that movie _Village of the Damned_?' Clay whispered in a choked voice.

Desmond swallowed hard, not daring to reply at first. 'We should ... we need to get out of here,' he murmured, taking a couple of steps to continue in the direction they'd been heading. 'We need to move.'

'Uh-huh,' Clay agreed, hurrying along the street next to Desmond without taking his eyes off the army of children. 'Let's ... oh, _fuck_!' he groaned.

A glance back at the playground gave a swift explanation for the terror-struck curse. As Clay and Desmond moved up the street, the children's heads swivelled on their necks with horrible uniformity, keeping the two men always firmly in their gaze. Desmond felt hairs rising on the back of his neck and sped up.

Finally, someone moved out of sync. A tow-headed boy, no older than seven, stooped slowly to the ground and picked up a stray rock, weighing it in his palm as he straightened up again.

'Run,' Desmond whispered urgently. ' _Run_.'

He shoved Clay ahead of him and they both took off at a sprint. Just before they reached the end of the railings, Desmond heard something whistle past his head and collide with a resounding _clang_ against a nearby lamp-post.

The railings ended and they stumbled into the shade of a tall line of shrubbery outside someone's front garden. Once they were out of sight, almost instantaneously, they heard the sound of children's voices and boisterous activity from the school start up again as though it had never stopped. Desmond could feel his entire body shaking and wondered if he was experiencing a panic attack, which seemed ludicrous after everything he had already been through. Nonetheless, he had the feeling that he would be seeing the awful, robotic turn of those children's heads and the glassiness of their eyes in many nightmares to come.

He looked over and found Clay looking even more shaken than he was. Too shaken, in fact. Clay's eyes were darting around madly - blindly - in his head and a glance at his mouth revealed that he was muttering under his breath, very quickly, in an unknown language.

'Oh, crap,' Desmond sighed, putting his hands on Clay's shoulders and gently easing him down to the ground. He then took Clay's chin in one hand, pressed the other hand over his eyes, and began speaking to him very clearly. 'Your name is Clay Kaczmarek. My name is Desmond Miles. The date is December 6th, 2012. We're in your home town, we're going to see your father...'

It took about a minute or so of speaking the basic facts before the tension finally went out of Clay's body and his breathing evened out. Desmond took his hands away cautiously and was relieved to find Clay looking up at him with recognition.

'Welcome back,' he said, trying to keep his tone light.

Clay licked his dry lips and got to his feet, mostly steady now but still looking somewhat disoriented by the return to reality. 'Sorry,' he said in an anguished voice. 'I just...'

'Forget it, there's nothing to apologise for. Come on, let's get to your dad's place.' Desmond didn't want to stay near the school any longer than they had to.

They walked faster now, with a nervous edge about them. 'Maybe things have just changed since I was at that school,' Clay said, glancing back over his shoulder. 'But I don't remember kids being that...'

'Hellspawn-y?' Desmond suggested.

'That's a good word for it, yeah. What do you think it means?'

'Well it basically means that they were acting like they came from...'

Clay socked him lightly in the shoulder. 'Shut up. I meant, what do you think they were doing?'

'They were staring at us. Probably wondering what a cool guy like me was doing walking around with a geek like you.'

'Joking isn't going to make this go away, Desmond,' Clay said sternly, but he was grinning a little despite himself and seemed to have relaxed marginally.

'I know, I just...' Desmond sighed. 'Let's just get to your house, OK?'

'There it is.' Clay pointed a finger towards a low-roofed house not far down the road, an odd expression on his face as he took in the ragged lawn and the bare tree out front. Desmond looked as well, and was a little taken aback by how normal Clay's childhood home appeared from the outside. Desmond himself had grown up in the woods, the faint smell and rumble of the generators always in the air, the compound made up of small wooden buildings that the Assassins had built themselves. This street might not be white picket-fenced but it was disarmingly suburban. To have come from this world into one of ancient artefacts and assassinations and secret organisations must have been incredibly jarring.

'Do you have a key?' Desmond asked as they walked up to the front door.

Clay smiled tightly. 'They weren't really big on letting me keep sharp metal objects when I was in the mental hospital. I don't know what happened to all my stuff.' He took a deep breath. 'Dad's home, though. That's his van parked outside.' He didn't comment on the fact that his father was home in the middle of the day on a Thursday, but instead raised his fist and rapped sharply on the door.

As they waited, Desmond suddenly realised how bedraggled they both must look after over a fortnight sleeping in a van. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd properly washed, and while he'd been rotating the few clothes he'd brought with him he must have been wearing this set for at least a couple of days now. He tried to nonchalantly run a hand through his hair to flatten it, and was just considering trying to sniff his armpit in a subtle manner when the door opened and suddenly Harold Kaczmarek was standing in front of them.

'Hi, Dad,' Clay said, barely a tremor in his voice.

Desmond had expected that Harold would simply look like a much older version of Clay, but there was little superficial resemblance between father and son. Harold was at least an inch shorter, with grey-threaded dark hair, brown eyes and heavy brows. There was something of Clay in his nose and jawline, but the telltale broken blood vessels of alcoholism were visible in his cheeks and his breathing was a little short. There was no smell of booze on his breath, though, and he was steady on his feet as he stared at the two young men on his doorstep.

He didn't say anything when he saw Clay, but Desmond got the impression that Harold had just fractionally clenched every muscle in his body. He didn't move out of the doorway.

'This is Desmond,' Clay added after an excruciating pause. Glancing over at him, Desmond spotted the familiar signs of Clay fighting down emotion, and wondered if it was his father who had taught him to be ashamed of expressing his feelings too openly. He fidgeted on the spot before asking, an edge to his voice, 'Can we come in?'

For a long moment, Desmond was sure that Harold was going to refuse. Then he gave a neutral grunt and walked back into the house, leaving the door open behind him.

Desmond glanced hesitantly over at Clay, whose brows had lifted in sadness now that he was no longer face-to-face with his father. 'He's a real charmer, right?' he said through gritted teeth, stepping over the the threshold.

They caught up with Harold in the kitchen, sitting at a grimy-looking table and nursing a cup of coffee. On the way in, a series of notches on the doorframe caught Desmond's eye. He peered at them, and realised that they were height marks scratched in with ages next to them, showing how tall Clay had been at six months old, and nine months, and one year, eighteen months, three years, the growth spurt that had occurred at age four and so on until the height marks stopped abruptly at nine years and four months old.

'Coffee?' Clay asked, and Desmond broke out of his reverie to see his friend standing by the sink, the kettle gently pouring a cascade of steam into the air besides him.

Desmond's mouth watered at the offer. 'Yeah, please. Black, one sugar.'

Clay nodded and plucked two cups from the sink, rinsing them out. As he prepared the coffee - clattering sounds deafening in the excruciating absence of conversation - Desmond looked over at Harold and attempted a friendly smile. He may as well have not bothered, for Clay's father was not looking at either of them, but was instead staring down into his coffee as though it held the secrets to life itself.

'Looks like we're out of sugar,' Clay sighed, handing Desmond a steaming cup of black coffee before taking a seat at the kitchen table. Desmond walked around and sat opposite Harold, glancing from him to Clay expectantly as the family sat in silence.

'I'm fine, by the way, Dad,' Clay said, and he wasn't even bothering to mask the irritation in his voice any more. 'Thanks for asking. You must have been worried, what with the fact that I haven't called or come to visit for two years. Did you try to get in touch at all or-?'

'Clay,' Desmond admonished gently. He didn't want to be caught in the middle of a family feud so soon after showing up.

Clay made a visible effort to collect himself, taking a deep breath before looking up at his father again. 'I was ... I was in a mental hospital, Dad. I was going through a lot of bad stuff and I ... we need to stay here for a while. I need to get myself together. We won't get in your way, we can sleep in the basement. I'll pay ... rent, if that's what it takes.'

Harold didn't reply to this - not to ask about the mental hospital, nor to rage at the idea of Clay and Desmond coming to stay in the small house. He didn't even drink his coffee, just sat and stared downwards. Desmond noticed with unease a slight shaking in his hands and shoulders, but Clay now seemed too upset to notice anything of the sort.

'Talk to me, Dad,' he pleaded. 'Yell at me if you have to, but please just say something.' He drew in a deep, brave breath. 'I ... I missed you.'

At that, Harold finally looked up, and with an uncomfortable squirm of his stomach Desmond realised that the man was crying silently. His expression stayed neutral but his cheeks were wet with tears.

Then he said, to Clay, 'I wish you hadn't come home.' And he stood up abruptly, and walked out of the room.

Clay stared at the spot where he had been sitting for a good few seconds. A huff of disbelieving, utterly humourless laughter escaped his mouth and he slumped backwards in his chair.

'He's probably just in shock,' Desmond suggested, needing to say something to counteract the awfulness of it all.

'Yeah? Guess he's been "in shock" for most of my adult life,' Clay said bitterly.

'He'll come around.'

Clay shrugged and finally turned his head. 'Maybe we should just...'

He stopped talking. His lips parted a little in dismayed confusion. He stared into the doorway ahead of him, the doorway with the notches on the frame, and Desmond turned his head to find out what Clay was looking at, the timing of the turn such that he didn't really see the shotgun fire, and he didn't see Clay get hit either. He heard the roar of it, the shattering of Clay's coffee mug and the window behind him, and the clatter and thud and crash as what seemed like half the kitchen was demolished, but Desmond was already moving by that point. He vaulted across the table as Harold - wide-eyed, with tears still streaming miserably down his cheeks - brought the barrel of the shotgun around.

Desmond hand whipped up and he grabbed the shotgun, wrestling it away and throwing it to the ground without so much as a thought of trying to use it. He fought his way past Harold's fists and grabbed the man by the hair, using the leverage to slam his skull back against the doorframe until he went limp. Harold slid down the frame, his head coming to rest by the mark of Clay Kaczmarek, aged three years and six months.

For a moment, Desmond could do nothing but stand with his head reeling and chest heaving. It was as though he had left his mind behind, still sitting at the table, and now it was catching up to his body and failing to cope with the insanity of what had just taken place. He might have stood there all day, had he not been stirred by a soft moan from behind him. Desmond jerked in shock, and then turned around.

The kitchen was a wreck. There was a thick splatter of gore over the sink and walls that had been directly behind Clay, and a fine red mist still settling everywhere else. At first it seemed that Clay had completely vanished, wiped out of existence by the shotgun blast, but then Desmond heard another groan and realised that Clay was lying on the floor where he had fallen, partially hidden by the table, and then time went from passing by in slow motion to suddenly speeding up to much faster than was normal, and Desmond threw a chair across the room when it blocked his path to Clay, and then he was kneeling in a spreading pool of blood and hyperventilating madly as he tried to figure out what the hell to do with his hands.

Clay had practically been cut in half. He'd been hit just below the breastbone and everything south of there and north of his groin was a tangled, impossible mess. He was making a guttural clicking noise in the back of his throat with each laboured breath and staring up with dimming blue eyes at the ceiling with an expression of bewilderment. With a great effort, he lifted a hand from his side, and Desmond grabbed hold of it desperately and squeezed Clay's slippery, cooling fingers as he leaned over him.

Clay was the first to speak, his voice slurred and thick. 'My dad...' he mumbled, blood bubbling at his lips. 'Is my dad OK?'

Desmond looked over wildly at Harold, who was still slumped on the ground, his chest rising and falling steadily. In between shaky, hiccuping breaths Desmond replied, 'Yeah ... yeah he's just knocked out.'

Clay closed his eyes wearily. 'G'd,' he muttered. 'Take ... the shotgun ... when you go. Don't wan' him waking up ... doin' something dumb.'

Briefly, Desmond considering telling Clay that he was going to be fine, and that they would get to a hospital and the doctors would fix him up and he'd be back on his feet in no time. Except they'd both seen too much death not to recognise it when it was in the room, and Desmond couldn't let his last words to Clay be a lie, so he just sat there with Clay's hand in his, and after a while Clay opened his eyes to squint at him, and Desmond realised that he was saying, 'Sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry, oh God, Clay, I'm sorry, Clay, oh fuck...' or words to that effect in a strange litany.

But Clay only smiled faintly and said, 'It's OK ... least I got ... to come home.' And then he died, with his eyes still open, and Desmond was left kneeling and staring in disbelief and noticing with an odd fixation the way that Clay's blood oozed into the cracks in the kitchen tiles. He tried saying Clay's name a couple of times, out of a sheer incredulity that something so enormous and terrible could have happened in so short a space of time, but of course there was no reply.

Time passed, an indeterminable amount, and when Desmond came back to himself he was standing on Clay's lawn with the shotgun in his hand, swaying slightly on the spot, and his clothes were drenched in cold blood and clinging to him, and quite suddenly it occurred to Desmond that he could not cope with this, with any of this.

There was a woman walking down the street, pushing a stroller with a baby in it, leaning over occasionally to coo at it. Desmond let the shotgun drop from his limp fingers and it landed with a heavy clatter on the grass. He walked out onto the sidewalk, into the path of the woman and her stroller, and he held out his hands placatingly and said in a surprisingly clear voice: 'Help me.'

The woman stopped and looked at him and went unnaturally still. Even the baby stopped its discontented wailing and gawped up at Desmond with wide blue eyes.

'Help me,' Desmond said again. It felt as though someone else was in control of his mouth and vocal chords, and he was happy to let them take over.

The woman reached into the pocket of her coat, still with that same calm expression on her face, and stepped around her stroller. Desmond looked down passively as she arranged a ring of keys in her fist, spreading the keys out in the gaps between each clenched finger so that they protruded like claws. His instincts saved him as she suddenly whipped her hand towards his face, for he threw himself backwards and stumbled and nearly fell. The woman pursued him, leaving her baby forgotten behind her.

Feeling as though he was caught in some kind of hideous nightmare, and taking a fleeting comfort in the idea that he might wake up at any moment, Desmond screamed for help again, and again as he ducked another attack. A car that had been driving by screeched to a halt and several people crossed the street to see what all the commotion was about.

Desmond staggered towards a thickly-built man gratefully, hoping for some kind of protection from the madwoman, but then felt a chill spread in his chest as the man's expression went simultaneously completely blank and utterly focused ... on Desmond. The same happened with each of the people who had come to help; as soon as they got close enough to see Desmond's face, their concern would vanish and they would look at him with an awful kind of hunger.

In desperation, Desmond grabbed a man's shirtfront and screamed, ' _Help me_!'

A blow landed on his shoulderblades. Another in his kidneys. Then the woman with the keys slashed them at the side of his head, tearing his ear and neck open a little, and there was fresh blood trickling down to seep into the shirt that was already soaked with Clay's. People were lashing out at Desmond with their fists and scratching at his clothes. One man grabbed hold of his arm and yanked viciously, as though trying to rip it from the socket, and that was when Desmond finally reacted as his ancestors had taught him.

He slammed his heel upwards into someone's nose and drove his elbow into a stomach. These were not people to him any longer, they were simply body parts in need of breaking, and break they did as Desmond fought his way out of the insane, bloodthirsty crowd. Knowing that he could not take them all on, he sprinted over Clay's lawn (there was a shower of bloodstained glass from the kitchen window embedded in the ground) and barely slowed down as he snatched up the shotgun, fleeing with the mob rapidly falling behind farther and farther as they failed to keep up with him.

The entire world might have turned upside down, but Desmond could still run. And so he ran.


	16. Chapter 16

**December 9th 2012**

Daniel jogged on the spot as calmly as he could manage, waiting for the other runner to pass so that he could cross the narrow bridge across the river in Fairmount Park. The cold air was biting at the exposed skin of his face, but not as harshly as the lack of space was biting at his temper. The corrective which encouraged healthier eating in the population had the unfortunate side effect of giving many people the urge to get off their asses and do some daily exercise. Which had been fine, until they started encroaching on Daniel's territory.

'Thanks, buddy,' the tubby, middle-aged man huffed cheerfully on his way past.

'Oh no, thank _you_ ,' Daniel sniped back sarcastically, baring his teeth in an unconvincing grin.

He was undeniably on edge - had been ever since he'd escaped (that was the version of events he'd relayed to Rikkin, anyway) from the sorry clutches of Desmond Miles and his team. Returning with the two Pieces of Eden had redeemed him somewhat for his earlier mistakes in the eyes of the other Templars, but Daniel knew that if it hadn't been for the rescue team and Miles' decision to free him, he would probably have died a captive of the Assassin Order.

Crossing the bridge and going off-path to avoid any more run-ins, Daniel reflected on yesterday's psych session with Doctor Sung.

'I'm doing fine, Doc. No problems.'

'Daniel, you've been my patient for over ten years now. I know when you're not being completely open. I promise you that whatever you want to talk about will stay between these four walls...'

'Yeah, sure.'

'My job is to _treat_ you, Daniel, not to spy on you. You were kidnapped, off your meds for days on end, kept in deplorable conditions...'

'"Deplorable conditions"? Come on, Doc, we've talked enough about my so-called childhood for you to know that I can handle a few days tied up in a basement.'

'I also know that you only talk about your childhood as a last resort, when you're trying to throw me off track.'

'I'm trying to save you time. There's nothing to talk about.'

'Actually, Daniel, one of the key ideas behind therapy is that there's always something to talk about.'

By the end of the session they'd both been exhausted by the verbal parrying, and Daniel had felt even more on edge than when he'd arrived. In the evening he'd tried to go out and pick someone up for a one-night stand, but the only woman who'd taken an interest had refused sex on the grounds that she'd only just started on birth control pills and (though she didn't know it) the corrective that Daniel had helped agree upon prevented her from consenting to sex with just a condom. He'd jerked off instead and had a restless night, oversleeping enough that his usual exercise regime was thrown off-timetable.

 _Discipline, discipline_ , Daniel repeated to himself, and wondered if Rikkin would mind if he committed a murder or two. It wasn't as though they'd have any trouble covering that sort of thing up.

He'd been reunited with Bill Miles, Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane on November 23rd. They had walked right into the Philadelphia base along with a few dozen other Assassins, all of whom had been "instructed" to report for processing. Daniel had watched them passively line up to be placed inside the Animi with little more than a detached curiosity.

Then, a couple of weeks later, he'd been reunited with Clay Kaczmarek. Local police reports of gunfire had caught their intelligence teams' attention, since according to the correctives there shouldn't have been any unauthorised shootings going on, and Daniel had been sent along to oversee the investigation. Kneeling over Kaczmarek's wrecked and staring corpse, he had felt a growing sense of unease that he knew could only be satiated by his debrief with Rikkin today.

The meeting was in an hour. Daniel wasn't going to have enough time to lift weights. He pushed himself hard whilst running back to his apartment and pulled a muscle in his calf.

* * *

'Ah, Daniel,' Rikkin said, not looking up from the papers in his desk as Daniel entered the office, limping slightly. 'Good to see you again. How was your session with Dr. Sung?'

Daniel didn't so much as blink. Of course Rikkin would know about his therapy sessions - hell, he probably got the notes e-mailed directly over to him within minutes of them ending. 'Fine, Alan. I'm feeling much better now.'

'Good, good,' Rikkin said absent-mindedly. He probably would have given the same response if Daniel had said, _actually I told Dr. Sung a bunch of lies and right now I'm so wound up that I feel like ramming my hidden blade into your eye_. Finally setting the paperwork aside, Rikkin stood up from his desk and sauntered over to Daniel, who was still standing stiffly just inside the doorway. Rikkin put his hands into the pockets of his trousers and affected a paternal air. 'I hope there are no hard feelings about what happened when the Assassins contacted me,' he said in a tone of utterly false regret. 'You know our policies, Daniel. We never give in to terrorists, no matter how painful the...'

'No harm done,' Daniel interrupted shortly.

Rikkin smiled broadly. 'That's why I like you. You've always been able to see the big picture.' Apparently deciding that Daniel's kidnapping was just another piece of history to be shelved, he turned on his heel and walked back to his desk. 'So,' he said, beckoning at Daniel to approach him, 'I wanted to thank you for dealing with the Kaczmarek shooting. I understand you got everything cleaned up.'

Daniel nodded. 'The father's been taken in for questioning, and I had Clay Kaczmarek's body brought in for an autopsy. He's in the morgue right now...'

'Oh, not any more,' Rikkin revealed mildly. 'I had the body incinerated this morning.'

For a moment Daniel said nothing at all. He breathed in slowly through his nose and counted to five. Then he said, as reasonably as he could manage, 'I'd barely started the investigation. Kaczmarek's body could have been extremely useful. I wanted to have our science team do an MRI of his brain, try to find out why he didn't respond to the corrective...'

'I can save you some time there,' Rikkin said with a smile. 'Kaczmarek was a hybrid - he had a high enough concentration of First Civilisation DNA to be unaffected by the Piece of Eden. I suspected as much, but I had it confirmed when he didn't report here for processing.'

Daniel realised that his mouth was hanging open slightly and hurriedly recovered his composure. 'If Kaczmarek was a hybrid,' he said slowly, trying not to sound like he thought he was talking to an idiot, 'Then it would have been immensely useful to have his brain dissected. If we're going to round up the rest of the hybrids then...'

But Rikkin interrupted him again. 'Round them up?' he repeated, with a pitying expression. 'Why would we do that?'

'We can't just have them wandering around!'

'I agree completely. Why do you think I had Kaczmarek killed?'

'Kaczmarek was killed by his father.'

'Yes, under my instruction.' Rikkin looked puzzled for a moment, and then realisation bloomed on his face and he laughed. 'Oh, of course, you don't know about this yet. When Kaczmarek and Miles failed to show up, I realised that they must be hybrids and so I implanted a kill-on-sight corrective in the population. Much more efficient than wanted posters.'

Damn, Rikkin was a cold bastard. Usually Daniel had a certain level of admiration for that quality, but in Rikkin's case it was clear that he got a kick out of being such a bastard - there was a self-indulgent glee to him that was profoundly irritating. Right now, however, Daniel had a specific grievance to raise. 'You implanted a new corrective? We never discussed that.'

A storminess ghosted its way into Rikkin's expression. 'We discussed the fact that I would make amendments if I considered them necessary.'

'It was my understanding that you would at least let the rest of the Inner Sanctum know. Does Warren-?'

'It was a minor decision,' Rikkin interrupted in clipped tones. 'I didn't want to waste your time with it, not when you're so ... busy.' He dripped a small dose of sarcasm into the pause.

Abruptly, he crossed the room to the bank of screens and buttons that had been installed within the past few months. They covered an entire wall, some of them monitors showing feeds from all over the world, others controls to make minor adjustments to the satellite remotely. But there was only one control that really mattered: a perfectly spherical, near-transparent orb the same size and shape as the Apple of Eden. The clear Apple was a proxy built upon First Civilisation technology and programmed to resonate with its twin on the satellite - information relayed directly through the skin of whoever touched it and sent to the Apple of Eden to subsequently be transmitted to the mind of every person on the planet.

Rikkin plucked the Apple from its holder and held it delicately in his hand as he crossed the room, back to Daniel, his thumb caressing the surface of it lovingly.

'Do you think I am cruel, Daniel?' he asked quietly, still looking down at the Apple.

The question took him off-guard. 'What do you mean, cruel?'

'Come along now. I know that you were an Assassin once-'

'A long time ago,' Daniel corrected softly.

'Even so. You once thought of the Templars as a threat. Why?'

'Because I was programmed to. The act wouldn't have been convincing otherwise.' Daniel was not interested in continuing this particular conversation.

'What do the Assassins believe in, Daniel?' Rikkin persisted.

Fighting down the urge to roll his eyes, Daniel replied shortly: 'Nothing. Freedom, I suppose, but since they don't think anything is true...'

'Exactly,' Rikkin cut in, rolling the Apple around between his fingers. 'Liberty. It's a noble concept, of course, but I think that the human race has had quite enough liberty to be going on with. They had their chance, Daniel. It’s not as though the rules were difficult to follow. Do not lie, do not murder, do not cheat, do not steal, do not rape … these things should have been self-evident, yet somehow these people still struggled with them. They had thousands of years of opportunity to learn - to _improve_ themselves - and they wasted every last one of them. They showed themselves to be incapable of making the right decisions, and so now we will make the decisions for them.'

'You mean that _you_ will make the decisions for them.'

Daniel hadn't meant to say it. His leg was aching and his blood was high with frustration and _god damn it_ he had better things to do than stand still and let Alan Rikkin make smug little speeches at him, but still he regretted saying it immediately. He reluctantly met Rikkin's eyes, which were gleaming suspiciously, but was careful not to apologise for speaking out of turn. The only way he could now make this situation worse would be to show weakness. His best bet was to act as though he wasn't aware of the insubordinance of his statement.

'Yes,' Rikkin said at last, quietly. 'I will make the decisions. In my authority as Grand Master.'

Daniel cleared his throat awkwardly and nodded. 'I should go,' he said. 'I need to question Kaczmarek's father, arrange an insanity plea for the murder to get him locked up. We don't want him talking-'

'Oh, there won't be any need for that,' Rikkin assured him in a light-hearted tone. 'I'll take care of the details. By the end of the day, Harold Kaczmarek won't be aware that he ever had a son.'

'But the neighbours, Kaczmarek's friends...'

Rikkin laughed patronisingly. 'Oh, Daniel, you're still stuck in the old way of thinking. I know, it's going to be a difficult adjustment, but you have to accept that we don't have to arrange elaborate cover-ups any more. We don't have to pull a hundred different strings to tidy away a single murder. The physical evidence will be thrown away with the rest of the garbage, I'll instruct the relevant people to destroy Kaczmarek's health, social security, education and employment records, and as for his friends and family ... well, those are easily taken care of. All I need to do is issue a general global corrective so that anyone who has ever come into contact with Kaczmarek will forget they ever met him.'

'You can do that?' Daniel asked incredulously.

'Of course. Similar to the way I've arranged for Desmond Miles and any other hybrids we discover to be dealt with. I create a corrective consisting of an image of the person's face, and an instruction. With Miles, the instruction is "kill". With Kaczmarek, the instruction is "forget". Quite simple, really. In fact...' His expression went distant for a moment, and an odd kind of energy seemed to build up around the Apple in his hand. '... I've just done it,' he finished, releasing a long breath and smiling proudly.

'You didn't just kill Kaczmarek,' Daniel said slowly, breaking down what Rikkin had said and working out the implications. 'You deleted him.'

'Yes,' Rikkin confirmed. 'Isn't that kinder? No one will grieve him. No parents crying at his graveside, no friends looking mournfully at his photographs, no memorial services or weepy tribute poems. I have simply adjusted history so that Clay Kaczmarek never existed.' He smiled. 'Marvellous, isn't it?'

'And you'll do this for every hybrid? You don't want to, I don't know, learn about them ... try to figure out what makes them tick?'

'Why would I?' Rikkin countered dismissively. 'I don't care about them. They're bugs, glitches in the system, and I want them gone. When I hire an exterminator I don't ask him to show me the corpse of every rat he finds so that I can go over with it with a fine toothcomb. The world needs cleaning of these hybrids, Daniel, however insignificant their numbers are. Once we're rid of them, we'll have total control and we can move things along without any distractions.' With an air of finality, he stalked back over to his desk and sat down, setting the Apple down onto another holder that he kept at his right hand. 'Thank you for the debrief,' he said in a pleasant tone. 'You can arrange for Harold Kaczmarek to be taken home. The team will have finished cleaning his kitchen and replacing his window by now.'

Daniel nodded, but he was distracted, frowning at something that Rikkin had said which didn't quite make sense. 'Alan,' he said slowly.

'Hmmm?' Rikkin was already looking back down at his paperwork.

'There's something I don't understand. If you deleted Kaczmarek from the global consciousness, then why can I still remember him?'

A taut, straining silence stretched out through the room. Alan Rikkin had been drumming his fingers on the desk, but they froze in mid-air, shaped into an odd sort of claw. Then he lifted his head sharply to stare at Daniel as though he had never seen him before, and in a great, snowballing rush Daniel thought over the thing that he had just said, the information he had just given, and a glimmer of the implications of it struck him - obviously a split second after it had struck Rikkin.

Daniel had a naturally perfect poker face, however, and maintained his casually curious expression as Rikkin plucked the Apple from its holder once more, and crossed the room, and stood an arm's length away, his slate-grey eyes as cold as Daniel had ever seen them, and darkly suspicious.

Slowly, Rikkin lifted the Apple in his hand, and Daniel mentally flashed back to the Winter Palace and the cold statue of Jupiter holding a similar artefact aloft. The charge of energy built up around the Apple once more and Daniel braced himself for something, anything: a sudden pain or an instruction to stand on one leg or turn on the spot. He knew, it was clear, that Rikkin was testing him.

He failed the test.

No instruction came. If it was given, it never arrived. Small beads of moisture appeared on Rikkin's forehead as he strained visibly, trying to force his will through the Apple and into Daniel, and having no effect whatsoever.

Daniel looked back at Rikkin impassively as the man finally gave up and dropped the hand holding the Apple down to his side. They both knew what this meant, but Daniel's entire life now hinged upon convincing Rikkin that he had not yet realised it.

'Alan?' he said, in a convincingly puzzled voice.

Rikkin turned away slowly, hiding his face from Daniel's view. He walked back to the bank of screens and set the Apple down in its holder, stopping for a moment to simply rest his hand upon it. Then he went back his desk and sat down, his expression dark and pensive. At last he said, looking up at Daniel coldly, 'You should get on with your work. I have things to take care of.'

'Alright. Call me if you need me.'

Daniel walked out of Alan's office, forcing himself not to move too quickly, not to do anything that would give himself away. His mind was racing, heart beating a little too quickly, at the magnitude of what had just happened, and he realised with a calm, resigned certainty what he would have to do now.

 _Oh well_ , he thought. _I had a good run._

Over ten years of service with Abstergo, and now it was all over. Oh, he could hang around, perhaps try to convince them of his loyalty so that he might be allowed to live, but Daniel had no interest in placing his life as the stakes in a gamble where his luck was measured by Alan Rikkin's benevolence. This thing - this cruel accident of fate which had given him unshakeable free will - made him a natural enemy of the Templars. Perhaps he should have known that his Assassin blood was always going to betray him.

So, he had to leave. He needed to get the best head start that he possibly could, and so he stopped by his office and made a call down to the Operations team he'd been working with, instructing them to return the senior Kaczmarek to his home. Rikkin would be watching him now, so he had to go about his business normally until he was far enough away to start running. He wouldn't have time to go home, and so he grabbed everything from his office that could be useful without weighing him down: a pistol, extra ammunition, a thousand dollars or so in cash, a spare knife (he was already wearing his hidden blade), an untrackable smartphone, and a list of security codes for the building. Finally he sat down at his computer, opened a single file and scribbled down an address and phone number.

He headed down to the ground floor. In the elevator, he ran into some people he knew and made pleasant conversation with them, joking about the weather. As he complimented one of them on her new haircut, making a show of flirting, he decided that if he ran into security downstairs he would shoot her in the face to let them know he was serious, and grab someone else to use them as part hostage, part human shield.

Luckily for his elevator companions, there was no one waiting for Daniel when the doors opened. Rikkin - the fool - was probably still brooding on the top floor, thinking that he had the luxury of time, that he could have Daniel killed any time he liked. He would probably make a show of it - have Daniel dragged into his office and make another boring speech at him before instructing the guards to shoot him. If there was an upside to becoming an outcast, it would be never having to listen to Rikkin monologue again.

Daniel nodded at the lone security guard as he exited Abstergo through the rear set of doors, the ones that led out into the parking lot. He had a vehicle out here, not one that he used often, but which would allow him to put plenty of miles between himself and Philadelphia in a short space of time.

He had almost reached his car when a rather odd sight stopped him in his tracks.

Emerging from the line of trees that framed the parking lot - filthy and unshaven, red-eyed and looking half-crazed - was Desmond Miles.

For a moment Daniel considered ignoring him. He could just take Miles' appearance as a blessing, a distraction, and carry on with the escape plan. But then he looked again, _really_ looked, at the calm, detached fury and focus in Desmond's face, and something occurred to him. Daniel grinned and began running to catch up with the Assassin.


	17. Chapter 17

The kid was halfway across the parking lot before Daniel caught up with him. He was wearing a white hoodie (at least, it had most likely been white at some point) with the hood worn up to partially conceal his face. Probably the hood was the only reason Desmond had survived long enough to reach Abstergo, but Daniel had no qualms about using it for leverage. He ran silently behind the striding Assassin and reached out with one hand.

Unfortunately, Desmond's reflexes were better than Daniel had anticipated. A split second before being caught, he whipped his head around and performed a graceful, deadly turn, raising his left arm and whipping his hidden blade towards Daniel's throat. Had Daniel been the average Abstergo guard, he would have died in an instant. As it was, he ducked sharply to avoid the flying steel and in the same movement grabbed Desmond by the wrist, squeezing the bones together cruelly and then pulling hard, yanking Desmond around in a smooth arc and slamming him back against the side of a parked van.

There came a painful rush of air as the breath was forced out of Desmond's lungs, but he didn't stop moving. He bounced off the metal of the van and tried to use the momentum to tackle Daniel again, still desperately trying to drive his blade into Daniel's throat. His teeth were bared in a snarl, his eyes were focused to the point of near-blindness and he stank to high heaven, as though he hadn't made any intimations towards washing for several days. There were bruise-dark circles underneath his eyes, a thick bristle on his chin and cheeks, and some sore-looking scratches on his face and neck. He looked like something that had just crawled out of a cave and decided that it had a grudge against everything in the world.

Daniel grasped him firmly by the jaw, keeping the other hand tight around his wrist, and slammed him back against the side of the vehicle, pushing his head up and to the side. He let his fingers stray too close to Desmond's mouth and the Assassin snapped his teeth, like an animal, millimeters from Daniel's skin.

Daniel laughed despite himself. 'Well, you've gotten a lot feistier since the last time I saw you,' he commented laconically.

Desmond didn't reply, but instead jerked his knee up violently into the fork of Daniel's legs. He was caught just before impact; Daniel kicked him away and then stood on Desmond's foot to keep him pinned.

'Shame you're not any stronger,' Daniel taunted. He squeezed Desmond's jaw for emphasis, and shook him a little. 'What exactly were you planning to do? Walk into Abstergo and take everyone out with your blade? The security guys have guns, you know.'

In a sudden movement, he gripped Desmond's shoulder and spun him around quickly, so that his face was pressed against the cool metal of the van. There was a bag slung across his back, and Daniel dragged it off, feeling as he did so the weight and rattle of it and the shape of the object inside. He raised an eyebrow.

'A shotgun? Not the smartest weapon to take into a pistol fight. You-'

He got no further. Desmond brought up his free elbow and slammed it sideways into Daniel's jaw. Evidently, he _had_ grown a little stronger since their last meeting, or at least angry enough to lose any inhibitions he might have had. Daniel saw stars, overbalanced, and crashed to the ground. The back of his head smacked against the asphalt and his vision blurred for a moment, until the only thing that was visible was the glint of steel rushing towards him.

Daniel reached up and caught Desmond's wrist once more, with both hands, this time stopping the blade inches away from his throat. He gasped as Desmond grinned in triumph, dried blood in the cracks between his teeth, and leaned all his weight upon the blade, forcing Daniel to use every ounce of his strength to keep his throat from being pierced.

At that point, Daniel started to wonder whether he had, perhaps, made a mistake in initiating this confrontation. Remembering the temple beneath the Winter Palace, and the weakness that Desmond had shown there, he allowed the fear to show in his eyes as he struggled for his life.

'Please, don't,' he begged convincingly.

Desmond just smiled wider and pushed the blade closer to Daniel's throat.

So, apparently he could no longer rely on Desmond's mercy. Changing tactics, Daniel abruptly released his hold on Desmond's wrist whilst at the same time rolling his head to one side. The blade slammed down onto the asphalt, striking a few stray sparks and slicing a shallow line into the side of Daniel's neck, but the motion threw Desmond off balance and he fell forwards onto the ground, his elbow whacking painfully off the surface and collapsing underneath him. Daniel used the advantage to reverse their positions: straddling Desmond and pinning him down with the weight of his body, one hand on the Assassin's throat and the other on the buckle of his hidden blade.

'You,' he gasped, 'are exhausting. Quit fighting me, you irritating little son of a bitch, I'm just trying to have a conversation!'

Desmond used the last reserves of his strength to spit a glob of bloody saliva into Daniel's face. He grimaced, unable to wipe it away.

'Great. Now that you've got that out of your system, how about we call a truce and you try listening to what I have to say?'

Desmond spoke at last, his voice gravelly and full of venom. 'I'm done listening, Cross.'

'Oh yeah? You don't think it's a little odd that I'm the first person you've run into for days who _hasn't_ tried to kill you?'

That gave him pause for thought, dark brown eyes staring up at Daniel in part-suspicion, part-realisation. Then Desmond's gaze turned scornful again. 'What are you doing right now? Because it feels a lot like you're trying to kill me.'

'I could have snapped your neck when I had you up against the van. I've got a gun and two knives on me, and now I've got your shotgun as well, but I haven't used any of them. I don't want to kill you, Miles, I want to negotiate with you.'

'Fuck you!' Desmond spat (only figuratively this time). 'You think I'll voluntarily sign up as a Templar out of fucking peer pressure? I'd rather die.'

'That explains the suicide mission, then. What were you trying to do?'

'Why do you care?'

Daniel rolled his eyes. 'I'm really worried about your emotional wellbeing. What can I say? I'm a people person. Now talk, you little shit, before I change my mind about snapping your neck.'

Desmond stared up at him warily, the rage in his expression temporarily drained enough to leave room for a measure of rational thought. He winced, squirming a little, and then said: 'Let me up.'

'Ha. Nice try.'

'You want a truce? Fine. But it doesn't feel much like a suspension of hostilities when you're kneeling on my chest.'

Daniel was about to utter a sneering retort when he reconsidered his position. More specifically, he reconsidered _their_ position, with regards to the main building, and he glanced up worriedly at the entrance. Desmond twitched underneath him, almost instinctively, but didn't try to escape. It was clear that he was seriously considering a temporary peace - out of interest more than mercy - and that the best way to secure it would be to show the kid a measure of trust.

Reluctantly, Daniel slowly released Desmond's throat and arm, leaving his hands hovering over them for a moment in anticipation of some kind of attack. Desmond looked back at him with equal nervousness, but Daniel dutifully climbed off him, stood up, and then reached down with one hand.

'I'm not your enemy,' he explained calmly. 'Or at least - I don't have to be. Come with me and I'll explain, or go ahead and try to take on that entire building full of people by yourself.'

The Assassin glared up at him defiantly with red-rimmed eyes. Then, slowly, painfully, he climbed to his feet by himself, ignoring Daniel's outstretched hand. 'I'll give you three minutes,' he said firmly.

'You'll give me as much time as I want. Come on.'

Without looking over his shoulder, Daniel picked up the bag that Desmond had been carrying and walked over to his car, climbing into the driver's seat and tossing the shotgun in the back. He rested his hands on the steering wheel and waited, knowing that curiosity would be enough to pull Desmond in, no matter how insane he might have become after his days of isolation in an utterly hostile world.

Sure enough, the passenger door opened and Desmond slid into the car, moving gingerly around his fresh injuries from the fight. He slammed the door harder than was strictly necessary and sat staring straight ahead, slightly huddled into himself.

'What-?' Daniel began, then pulled a face. 'Hold on, you fucking stink.' He pushed the keys into the ignition and brought the car to life just long enough to open the window and let in some cool, fresh air. 'That's better. So, what was the plan? Disguise yourself as a hobo to lure people into a false sense of security, and go in there all guns blazing ... sorry, all _gun_ , singular.'

Desmond closed his exhausted eyes and let his head loll against the window. 'Why didn't you kill me?' he mumbled in a distant, wrecked voice.

'Did you want me to kill you?'

A husky, half-hysterical laugh escaped Desmond's mouth. 'Are we just going to keep asking questions back and forth?'

'Are you going to answer my first question?'

Desmond opened his mouth, obviously to ask another question just to keep the game going, but then he seemed to give up. He sighed, deep and long, and then said, 'I was going to kill Rikkin. I hadn't really thought much beyond that.' He reached up to scratch at the older cuts on his neck, scabbed-over flesh coming away in his fingernails. His head was still resting against the window, as though he could not hold the weight of it up on his neck, and his eyes were staring straight ahead, flicking from side to side fractionally and with the precise rhythm of a metronome. 'The last few days ... I was alone, and everywhere I went people would try to kill me. I would beg them for help, and then I'd have to hurt them to get away. I hurt some of them real bad. And I realised that I had nothing left, no one left, and I didn't want to wait around to get caught by the right mob or to be recognised by a cop with a gun. I wanted to ... have an impact. Do some good.'

Daniel thought this over silently for a moment. Then he asked, again, 'Do you want me to kill you?'

Desmond looked up at that, his eyes blazing with that old familiar fire even set, deep as they were, in the weary mask of his face. 'You could try,' he said in a low voice. 'But I wouldn't let you take me easily. If I ... if I can't take Rikkin out, then at least removing you from the world would be an act of good.'

Realising that he was deadly serious, Daniel smiled in what he hoped would be a placating manner. 'You don't want to make friends?'

'I had a friend,' Desmond interrupted, his voice all sharp edges. 'I had...' He broke off the sentence abruptly and took a few deep breaths before continuing. 'You are not my friend. I don't know why you're doing this. Maybe you're just trying to fuck with me but I gave you three minutes and they're up now.' He reached into the back seat of the car for his bag, and Daniel didn't try to physically stop him.

'You'd never make it to the top floor,' he said condescendingly. 'You wouldn't even make it to the elevator. And even if you did, it wouldn't matter, because Rikkin isn't in the building.'

Desmond froze in the midst of opening his door and stared over at Daniel. 'What?'

'Oh, didn't I mention that? Rikkin's out of the country, on business,' Daniel lied smoothly.

The expression on the young Assassin's heart was comically devastated, and Daniel had to resist the urge to laugh as Desmond slumped back, eyes glazing a little in depression. 'So this was all for nothing.'

'It was always going to be for nothing. Even if Rikkin was in the building, what could you have done? Taken out maybe 5 or 6 guards at an absolute maximum before getting shot in the head? Big accomplishment.'

'I could still kill you,' Desmond countered in a dull, yet dangerous, voice.

Daniel shrugged nonchalantly. 'Maybe. I wouldn't advise it, though. We have a common enemy now.'

Desmond stared at him for a moment, thoughtfulness clouding the anger in his face. Then he mused, 'You haven't tried to kill me, have you? Whatever it is that everyone else has got ... it doesn't affect you.'

'No.'

'Because you're a Templar?'

'Not ... exactly.'

Desmond's eyes widened in realisation, and then he threw his head back and gave a sickly laugh. 'Of course, I'd forgotten.'

'Forgotten what?'

'You're like me! You're a ... a hybrid.'

Daniel felt his stomach turn unpleasantly. The Assassins had known about this? For how long? Had they known while he was still working for them? Why had Bill chosen not to tell him?

'And now,' Desmond continued, madly gleeful. 'Now they've figured it out so you have to run. Because you're only useful to them so long as they can control you. Oh man, talk about a betrayal turning around and biting you in the ass.' He continued to laugh, weakly, shaking his head.

'Yeah, it's hilarious,' Daniel said, deadpan, refusing to let his irritation show. 'So, are you still planning to storm the castle, or do you want to come with me and find a better solution?'

'Better solution?' Desmond repeated scornfully, but there was a glimmer of interest in his expression. 'Like what?'

'Well, the best thing for you right now would be a shower and a change of clothes. After that...' Daniel paused, wondering how much he should give away. 'I have someone we can contact. Someone who might be able to help.'

'Someone who won't just try to kill me on sight?' Desmond retorted.

'Yes.'

That gave the Assassin pause for thought. He brought a hand up to his mouth and brushed his shaking fingers over his lips. Moisture welled up in his bloodshot eyes as he released a long, shuddering breath. Daniel shifted in his seat impatiently as he waited for any answer.

'Look, are you coming or...?'

'I thought it was gonna be over,' Desmond explained, barely speaking above a whisper, sounding much younger than he really was. 'I thought today was gonna be the last one. It gave me ... strength. Knowing this was the final stretch.'

Daniel considered this for a moment. Then he said, 'It's not the only thing that gives you strength, though, is it?'

Desmond looked over at him questioningly. Daniel continued.

'You're not here because you wanted to do the right thing. You're here because you're angry, and you want revenge. Don't get me wrong, I would say that's a far more reliable motivator than plain old boring altruism and self-sacrifice. In this case, though, it looks like all that hate made you kinda stupid.'

Desmond's eyes were very wide. Daniel grinned and continued, speaking as harshly as he could manage.

'You remember your friend Clay? Rikkin made his own father kill him, and he's been turning everyone against you as well. I picked up the guy's body yesterday, and Rikkin had it burned and tossed the ashes out with the trash. Then he wiped everyone's memories of him. Once you and I are gone, it'll be like Clay Kaczmarek never even...'

'Shut up.'

Daniel raised an eyebrow. 'No point in hiding from the truth.'

'If you talk about Clay again, I'll kill you.'

Daniel opened his mouth to retort that not talking about Kaczmarek would only contribute to Rikkin's plan of wiping his memory from existence, when he felt something cold and sharp pricking against his belly. Looking down, he saw that Miles had extended the blade on his reached and reached across so that the tip of had pierced Daniel's shirt and was pressed against his skin. He swallowed his temporary panic and nodded.

'Fine. I won't talk about him again.'

Desmond paused for a moment and pressed the blade a little deeper, almost enough to break through Daniel's skin, and then relieved the pressure and sheathed the hidden blade. He leaned back in his chair again, looking directly ahead at the Abstergo building.

'Are my friends in there? My father?' he asked in a low voice.

Daniel quickly weighed the value of telling another lie, and then decided that it wasn't worth the effort of imagination. 'Yeah, they are.'

'Are they hurting them?'

'Why would they need to hurt them?' Daniel asked disparagingly. 'As far as I know, they were put in the Animi for memory assessment and retraining. Hastings and Crane are out already and they've been assigned to work in different divisions. As for your father...' Bill Miles had still been inside an Animus, the last time Daniel had checked. 'They have other plans for him.'

He watched, impatiently, as Desmond scratched the beard that was starting to grow in on his face and sighed miserably. 'Poor Dad. He would have hated it ... being forced to sell out the Assassins like this.'

'Well, if it makes you feel any better, there aren't any Assassins left to sell out. Now, are we doing this?' And with that, Daniel pressed the barrel of the gun that he'd quietly pulled from its holster against Desmond's stomach. 'Or should I just end your whining right now?'

Desmond looked down at the gun, and for a moment he appeared to be seriously considering the decision. Then he reached down slowly and pushed the weapon aside. 'OK,' he said tonelessly. 'Tell me the plan.'


	18. Chapter 18

**December 10th 2012**

'Get up.'

Desmond stirred and groaned, blinking his way into consciousness, trying to figure out where he was. 'Clay?' he mumbled, his brain too slow to think properly.

'No. Get out of the van.'

As he sat up, memories rushed back into his head, and in a sick swirl Desmond experienced once again the horror and pain of Clay's death, the panic of fleeing from all human contact, the numbness of anger and the depression of being forced to carry on - all within a nauseating handful of seconds. He clutched at his head, which was aching from dehydration.

'Move it.' The back of the van was open and Daniel was standing with his arms folded, looking distinctly unamused. He leaned away fractionally as Desmond passed him, jumping down onto the grass and taking a deep breath of crisp winter air. They had driven a little way off the road to settle down for the night, parking the vehicle by a river which had chunks of ice forming at its banks.

'What time is it?' Desmond slurred sleepily, squinting in the early morning sunlight.

Daniel ignored the question. 'Take your clothes off,' he instructed coldly.

'What?' Desmond asked, utterly confused. He'd taken to sleeping fully-clothed, partly in order to stave off the cold, and partly so that he would always be ready to run if necessary.

'Clothes. Off. Now.'

Desmond considered objecting, but his brain was still operating too slowly to put up much of a fight, and so he reluctantly stripped off his shoes, shirt and jeans.

'Did I tell you to stop?' Daniel asked, when Desmond straightened up again. 'Boxers too.'

'Oh God, please tell me this isn't some weird sex thing, it's way too fucking early,' Desmond groaned, but complied with the instruction anyway, dropping his underwear and kicking it away. For a second he felt his body curl in on itself automatically in an attempt to cover his groin, but then he remembered that this was only Daniel Cross, after all, and Desmond honestly couldn't give a shit what the Templar thought of him. He put his shoulders back and chin up, folding his arms across his chest to try and stay warm, and asked, 'What-?'

He got no further. Daniel darted forward suddenly, grabbing Desmond around the waist before he had a chance to struggle and throwing him into the freezing river.

The water hit him like knives piercing every inch of his body, and Desmond opened his mouth to scream, only to find his vocal chords paralyzed by the cold. He spluttered to the surface, his bare feet finding purchase on the stony riverbed, and straightened up until the water was splashing around his chest.

Something thudded onto the bank, and Desmond managed to focus for long enough to realise that it was a bar of soap. Crouching down on the grass and huffing hot breath into his hands to keep them warm, Daniel looked at him sternly and spoke again.

'Don't even think about coming out of there until you're scrubbed within an inch of your life. I might have to share that van with you but I don't have to put up with you smelling like a farmyard.'

He stood up and returned to the van without so much as a backwards glance. Desmond stared after him, mouth hanging open in disbelief. For a moment he considered climbing out of the river immediately, the better to catch up with Daniel and pound him into the dust. But there was something almost cathartic in the agony of the freezing water on his skin, and so Desmond picked up the bar of soap and dipped it into the river, rubbing it over his palm and watching the lather rise and days of dirt begin to sluice away.

* * *

Daniel was tuning the radio when Desmond returned, almost fifteen minutes later. The kid climbed slowly and stiffly into the passenger seat, wearing a fresh set of clothes and a towel around his shoulders. He didn't speak, but simply sat hunched into himself, shivering violently. He smelled very faintly of flowers and his hair, which had lain limp and greasy on his head, was damp and dark and forming into natural curls. His lips were almost blue with cold and his skin was about as pale as it could get, but - most importantly of all - he was no longer stinking up the van. As a small act of mercy, Daniel turned the engine over and the heater burst into life, prompting Desmond to reach out gratefully and stretch his shaking fingers over it. He looked so utterly wretched that Daniel had to fight down an impulse to laugh.

'You know,' he said conversationally, speaking up to be heard over the sound of Desmond's chattering teeth. 'When my grandfather was six years old, his father made him lie on the bottom of a woodland river for over four minutes. It was supposed to be training, you know, in case he ever needed to hide from enemies. This was in Russia, in the winter, and they had to break the ice with an axe just so he'd be able to reach the water.'

He paused in the story and glanced over at Desmond, who was slumped back in his seat with his eyes closed, head lolling limply to one side, the only sign of wakefulness in the fingers that were still stretched out over the heater. Satisfied that he still had an audience, Daniel continued.

'During his combat training - again, this was when he was just a child - his father used to punish him by making him sleep outside in all weathers, even when the snow was six inches deep on the ground. You'd think he would have died, a little kid like that. He didn't die, though. The cold thickened his skin and the anger sharpened his senses, and when he was ten years old he shot his father in the back with a rifle, and took his hidden blade, and raised himself to adulthood with the skills he'd learnt. I guess you could say the training paid off.'

It seemed that Desmond had finally thawed out enough to speak. He opened one eye and looked over at Daniel balefully. 'So did you throw me in that river because you're hoping one day I'll be tough enough to shoot you in the back?'

'No. I threw you in the river because you smelled so bad it made me want to puke. The story was just to warm you up.'

Desmond opened his other eye and used it to glare. 'Thanks,' he said flatly.

'You're welcome. Let's move.'

'You really think we're going to make it to New Mexico?'

'One problem at a time. We have a stop to make first.'

* * *

**December 11th 2012**

Daniel returned with blood on his shirt.

'So,' he said calmly, slamming the van door and tossing a rattling brown paper bag into the passenger seat. 'Looks like Rikkin noticed I was missing. Put me on the Most Wanted list. I'm surprised it took him this long.'

They were parked on the outskirts of a small town on the border between Missouri and Oklahoma. Daniel had gone on what he termed "a supply run", and had instructed Desmond to stay hidden in the back of the van. Now he was grabbing a rag from the glove box and pressing it to a deep cut on his arm.

'Jesus!' Desmond exclaimed, sitting forward and speaking without thinking. 'Are you alright?'

For the first time since they'd met, Daniel looked surprised. He blinked, momentarily silenced, and then rearranged his face into an expression of derision. 'Just a scratch. Can't say the same for the pharmacist, though.'

'Did you kill him?'

Daniel shrugged, and then winced at the pull in his arm. 'Didn't check. The paramedics might get to him in time. Who cares?'

' _I_ care.'

'No you don't,' Daniel snapped irritably. His arm was clearly causing him a greater deal of pain than he was willing to let on.

Desmond clenched his jaw, and then cast around for a slightly cleaner scrap of material than Daniel was currently pressing against his open wound, finally settling on an old T-shirt. 'Here,' Desmond said, leaning forward. 'Hold out your arm...'

'Get off me,' Daniel sneered, snatching the T-shirt away and applying it to the wound himself. 'You've got a real problem, you know that?'

His tone of voice caused Desmond to bristle angrily. 'Oh yeah? What's that?'

'You can't function unless there's someone looking after you, or unless you're looking after someone else. The only thing you can't handle is looking after yourself. God forbid you should ever have to be self-sufficient.'

'You don't know me at all,' Desmond retorted, his temper rising. 'I ran away from home because I was sick of being controlled by other people. I looked after myself for years...'

'Oh yeah, in your high-pressure job as a ... waiter, was it?'

'Bartender.'

'Wow. I can't imagine how you ever coped with so much responsibility.'

Without waiting for a reply, Daniel noisily tore Desmond's T-shirt into shreds and wrapped a length of material around the cut on his arm, holding it in his teeth to tie it off and grimacing at the taste. This accomplished, he reached into the brown paper bag and pulled out two familiar-looking bottles: anti-psychotics and anti-cholinergics. He tipped two of each into the palm of his hand and downed the lot with a single swig of water, releasing a satisfied gasp when it was done.

'That's more like it,' he commented, replacing the lids on the bottles. 'Been seeing ghosts since we hit Indiana.'

Desmond gaped at him, the former argument dissipating from his mind. 'You were driving!' he exclaimed. 'Why didn't you say something?'

'Even hallucinating, I'm still a better driver than you.' Daniel delved back into the bag again and withdrew a third bottle. 'Here, I didn't forget you. Have a present,' he continued, tossing the pill bottle over to Desmond, who caught it deftly and frowned at the label.

'Prozac?'

'Favourite of miserable housewives all over the country. Happy Christmas.'

'I'm not depressed!' Desmond protested.

'You're not happy,' Daniel countered.

Desmond opened his mouth, and then closed it again, and broke eye contact to stare down at the little container once more. 'Why did you get me these?' he asked, quietly.

Daniel rolled his eyes. 'Two ways to treat depression - fine, _unhappiness_ ,' he corrected impatiently as Desmond opened his mouth once more. 'Talk about it, or throw chemicals at it. I sure as hell don't want to play therapist to an Assassin brat, so pills it is. Take them and start fucking participating, because I'm sick of dragging your sorry-for-yourself ass across the country.' He shoved the rest of the pills into the glovebox and climbed over into the passenger seat. 'You can start by driving. I want to get some shut-eye.'

But Desmond had not moved from where he was seated in the back of the van, contemplating the drugs that Daniel had just handed him. 'These won't work.'

'What do you mean, they won't work?'

Desmond laughed wearily. 'Can the pills bring Lucy back, or Clay? Can they stop the Templars from taking control of everything in the world? Can they stop the solar flares? If I'm unhappy, it's for a lot of good reasons.'

'You think you're special?' Daniel scoffed. 'You think that all the other unhappy people in the world are just indulging themselves? Everyone has something that's causing their damage, but the pills will patch it up all the same. Now take one, and start driving.'

With a sigh, Desmond tipped a dose of Prozac into his hand and swallowed it dry, wincing as the pill scraped his throat on the way down. He'd never been much into drugs before. Oh, he'd smoked pot occasionally, and even experimented with ecstasy and speed and acid at parties, but he'd never been into the New York "scene" of pill-popping, and the most he'd ever had in the way of prescription drugs was a round of antibiotics he'd been given for a chest infection. Still, an extra dose of seretonin might actually help to drag him up out of the funk of self-perpetuating sorrow that he'd found himself in after watching Clay die.

He tucked the bottle away into his shirt pocket and climbed into the driver's seat, pausing only to glance over at where Daniel was nursing his wounded arm.

'OK,' Desmond said with a sigh, starting the engine. 'Let's move.'

* * *

**December 12th 2012**

It was midday, and they were now a mere twenty miles away from the safe location that Daniel was guiding them to, which was just outside of La Cruces. The man in question was dozing in the passenger seat as Desmond drove, looking only a little worse for wear. That morning, Desmond had found Daniel using his hidden blade to carefully shave his face, maintaining only the scruff of yellow beard on his chin, but by this point the former Templar had run out of the few spare items of clothing that he had brought along, and had stopped complaining about Desmond's hygiene. They were probably both starting to smell pretty ripe by this point.

Desmond flicked a fly away from his ear, irritably, rolling down the window to let it out as he checked the map again.

Travelling with Daniel was different to travelling with Clay. Though he hated to admit it, Desmond actually found it somewhat liberating to be partnered with someone that he neither liked nor cared about. He did not watch what he said around Daniel, and did not feel the need to apologise after insulting him. The man had proven on more than one occasion that he was far more capable of taking care of himself in a fight than Desmond himself, and so there was no need to look out for him if danger was near. Travelling with Daniel was not all that different to travelling alone, aside from the barbed insults and the additional warmth in the van at night.

They were now surrounded on all sides by desert scrubland, and Desmond jabbed Daniel in the arm to wake him up. 'The turn's not on the map,' he said. 'Where is this place?'

Daniel opened one eye blearily, then the other, before seating up straight and squinting out of the window. 'Comin' up on the right,' he mumbled.

Desmond peered ahead and then gave a groan of disbelief when he saw the turn that Daniel was referring to. 'That's barely a road at all,' he complained.

'The van can handle it.'

Somewhat dubiously, Desmond turned the van into the expanse of the desert, and glanced over at his companion again. 'So,' he said. 'How do you know this guy is a hybrid?'

Daniel took a draught of water from his bottle before answering. 'I was assigned to track him down and recruit him through Lineage and Acquisitions a few years ago.'

'Recruit him the same way you recruited me?' Desmond asked, a little sharply.

'Not exactly.' Daniel smirked. 'I had more time with him than I had with you. Abstergo wanted me to convince him to join the Templars, since we already knew that his family had lapsed from the Assassins. So I rolled up with a small team and went to talk to him.'

'I take it the talks didn't go too well.'

'They went fine. Probably better than I deserved. According to our records, Vicente was just a cattle farmer living a quiet life out in the sticks with his family. As it turned out, he ran the biggest drug and gun cartel in New Mexico, and when I showed up I realised that his 'farmhands' were all armed to the teeth with Uzis.' Daniel sniffed and scratched at the corner of his eyebrow, at a tiny set of dual circular scars where he'd once had a piercing. 'He invited me in and he poured me a glass of whisky, and he listened to me talk about Abstergo and our ... opportunities.'

'Let me guess,' Desmond said. 'Really good dental plan?'

Daniel gave a short laugh. 'It did seem a little futile. The annual salary that I offered him barely covered what he made in a month doing what he did then. So I tried to sell it to him based on the Animus technology. I told him that he could relive the lives of his ancestors, see everything that they had seen.' He smiled a little at the memory. 'He said to me, "I'm enjoying the life I lead right now, amigo. Why would I waste any of the minutes I have left living someone else's life?"'

A silence followed as both men contemplated this perspective. Finally, Desmond asked, 'So I take it when he didn't come voluntarily, you tried to bring him in by force.'

'Sort of.' Daniel frowned at the memory. 'I didn't want to start a war with his cartel, so I went away and then came back again with our Piece of Eden - our Apple. Vicente's men all responded to it and fell to their knees, but he just pointed a shotgun at me and told me to get off his land. I...' Daniel bared his teeth in a grimace. 'I was arrogant. I'd gone there alone, and if I had gotten into a gunfight with him then there was a risk of killing him, or damaging his brain. Besides I was ... curious. I found him interesting. I guess you could even say I respected him, in a way. So we sort of agreed to a stalemate, and I let his men go, and I left.'

Desmond considered this story, and the implications of it, and swore loudly. 'So does this mean that Rikkin knows about Vicente?'

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Daniel's mouth tighten bitterly. 'No. On the way back, with the Piece of Eden, I was ambushed at Denver International Airport. The ... the Piece of Eden was destroyed, and the Eye Abstergo project was thrown right back to square one. Before I had time to debrief Rikkin on the situation with Vicente, I had already been assigned a new target. Someone that they needed urgently.'

Glancing over at Daniel's pointedly raised eyebrows, Desmond quickly realised with an unpleasant chill who the "target" was that he was referring to. 'Me.'

Daniel smiled with one corner of his mouth. 'You.'

An awkward lapse in conversation fell over them as they both realised that they'd just managed to speak at length with a noticeable lack of any uncivility; if not like friends, then at least like acquaintances. They had lost any interest in maintaining real animosity, now that they were both severed from their respective organisations.

'There,' Daniel said at last, pointing at a small collection of prefabricated buildings ahead of them. As they drew close, they passed a small herd of skinny, morose-looking cows, that were presumably kept around to maintain Vicente's cover story of being a cattle farmer. Desmond stared in puzzlement at their surroundings as he slowed the van to a halt just outside of the collection of dusty, one-storey constructions.

'How rich did you say this guy is?' he asked.

'I don't think building a huge mansion and drinking champagne out of diamond-filled glasses would be all that conducive to staying undercover,' Daniel drawled sarcastically, opening his door and stepping out of the van. Desmond scowled after him before doing the same.

'Vicente!' Daniel called, walking into the small yard that formed naturally at the centre of the surrounding buildings. Desmond saw him pull the hem of his shirt down over the pistol that was tucked into the back of his jeans.

An honest-to-god tumbleweed tumbled through the compound as silence met Daniel's call. Desmond watched his companion turn slowly on the spot, brow furrowed in frustration as he called out again: 'Vicente! It's Daniel Cross. From Abstergo. Let's talk.'

For a long moment, Desmond was sure that their journey had been wasted, and that Vicente's home was abandoned. Then the door of the furthest building burst open, rattling in its frame, and a tall, lithe Hispanic man with a full moustache and goatee stepped out. He was holding a shotgun at his hip, aimed at Daniel, and was grinning around the cigarette in his mouth.

'Cross,' he called out in greeting. 'I told you to stay off my land.'

The sound of the shotgun being cocked echoed across the yard.


	19. Chapter 19

'How do you take your eggs?'

The leader of New Mexico's largest drug cartel was standing at a stove, wearing a slightly grimy apron over his jeans and band T-shirt, rolling an egg around between his palms contemplatively as bacon began to sizzle in the frying pan. There were faint traces of a Mexican accent in the question, but it was clear that Vicente had been living in America for a long time. He raised his eyebrow at the two men seated at the table, and Desmond glanced over at Daniel uncertainly.

Vicentre rolled his eyes. 'It's not a trick question. I am not going to kill you if you get the answer wrong.'

'Scrambled,' Daniel replied coolly.

'Fried,' Desmond muttered.

Vicente whistled through his teeth, stilled the motion of the egg in his hands, and then cracked it expertly using his fingernails, dropping the yolk and whites into the frying pan next to the bacon. He then cracked another egg into a mixing bowl, added milk, and began whisking the mixture.

'We didn't come here for eggs, Vicente,' Daniel said.

'Speak for yourself,' Desmond interjected hurriedly. 'I can't remember the last time I ate hot food.' The smell of cooking bacon was making his stomach ache with need.

'Hmm.' Vicente poured the mixture into a second pan, this one with a base of melted butter, and picked up a spatula. 'What did you come here for, if not eggs? Here about the whole population going Stepford?'

'You noticed?' Daniel enquired with a slight grin.

'Notice?' Vicente made a tutting noise as he began to scramble Daniel's eggs. 'My whole business died overnight. My men abandoned me. My clients are gone. I have a huge stash of guns and drugs and no one seems to want them. It's like no one is interested in committing crime any more. It's a tragedy.'

'We want them,' Daniel said seriously, before Desmond had a chance to comment. Instead, he did a slow double-take.

'We do?' he asked in surprise.

Daniel sighed at the interruption. 'Not the drugs, obviously. But if we're going up against Abstergo then I'd like to be packing a little heat.'

'Against Abstergo?' Vicente repeated with a frown, turning the bacon. 'I thought you were working for them? Last time we met, you were all hot and bothered about getting me to sign up.'

'Yeah, well, I had a change of career,' Daniel said, throwing a dark look at Desmond for some reason.

Vicente nodded thoughtfully as he tipped the food onto two plated and walked over to the table with them, folding his arms as he took a seat next to Daniel. Desmond gave a soft, high-pitched moan as he took the first bite of bacon, closing his eyes in ecstasy as the flavour and heat flooded his mouth. When he looked up, however, he noticed that Daniel hadn't moved.

'You're not eating?' Daniel asked of their host pointedly.

Vicente grinned. Desmond paused in the middle of chewing, a sudden feeling of uncertainty in his gut.

'Why don't you try some of my food?' Daniel continued, offering his fork.

There was a long pause. Then Vicente laughed, pulled Daniel's plate in front of him, and ate exactly half of his bacon and eggs before returning it. Wiping his greasy mouth on his sleeve, the cartel leader said, 'That is what you get for being suspicious.'

* * *

As it turned out, the large empty space in the middle of all the compound's buildings was not just for decoration. The wiry Mexican man felt around underneath the dirt for several seconds before grinning in triumph and lifting up the corner of a hidden, filthy piece of sacking, pulling it backwards so that the dirt shifted away with it to reveal a wooden trapdoor set right in the middle of the desert. It was quite ingenious actually; you would never know it was there unless someone showed it to you, which meant that it would most likely go unnoticed in a police raid.

'You dug this out?' Daniel asked incredulously as Vicente pulled unlocked several padlocks and pulled the two doors open with a grunt.

He wiped his brow and shook his head. 'It was already here. I'd been running my operation here for about three years before I stumbled over it. It was just some grubby little cave then, scratches on the walls but nothing of value. So I sealed it up with plaster and rebuilt the doors, and then I moved the entire stash down here.'

He beckoned to them as he made his way down a set of rickety wooden steps, flicking a lightswitch on the wall as he descended to activate several bare fluorescent bulbs. The ceiling of the storeroom was about ten feet underground, and it was about ten feet across, twenty feet lengthways. Daniel ducked his head into the doorway and moved a couple of feet inside before suddenly freezing up.

He could actually hear his own heart begin to speed up. Somewhere beside him, he heard Desmond mutter, "holy shit." The words seemed far away and distant, though.

An entire wall of the storeroom was lined with weapons: shotguns, pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers and more. There were dozens of boxes full of grenades and ammo, along with lethal-looking blades that seemed to be modelled partially on assassin designs. Vicente was sitting on enough firepower to gear up a small army.

The opposite wall was lined with drugs. Hundreds of bricks of marble-white cocaine and light brown heroin and muddy-green marijuana. Carefully packaged flakes of crystal meth. Boxes of pill bottles, containing everything from Ecstasy to stolen prescription drugs like the Prozac that Desmond was carrying.

Daniel ... was torn.

He'd been a junkie for a long time. He had been on drugs for longer than he had now been clean and the sweetness of them, the numbness, the way they dulled the visions and scorched away his worries, and the feeling of flying and being above everything, or buried underneath a blanket of beautiful confusion ... he'd never forgotten. He'd kept it at bay with constant work and constant discipline but now, looking at enough drugs to keep him occupied for an entire lifetime, and with the butt of a pistol resting against his spine that could easily remove Vicente and Desmond from the equation he ... wavered.

Tearing his eyes away from the promise that lay in front of them, Daniel glanced over at Desmond. The kid was staring at the weaponry and ammunition on the other side of the room, a curiously tight, brooding expression. The small burst of curiosity that Daniel felt broke the spell that the drugs had temporarily cast over him, and he mentally shook himself in anger. That part of his life was behind him now. He'd tried being a loser and it hadn't worked out. Time to be a _winner_.

'Alright,' he said, stalking over to the gun racks and running his finger lovingly over the muzzle of a sniper rifle. 'Here's how it is, Vicente. We have money with us - a fair bit, but probably not as much as we need for a full loadout. The bigger the discount you give us, the greater likelihood there is that you'll get your regular customers back. So, that in mind...' He lifted the sniper rifle off the rack and held it confidently in one hand. 'How much do you want for this?'

Vicente looked from Daniel to the gun and then grinned, exposing a set of startlingly white teeth. 'I'm sure we can work something out.'

Five minutes later, Daniel had a pile of priority items stacked by the entrance to the storeroom: an RPG, the sniper rifle, four brand new pistols with silencers, two machine guns, two shotguns, grenades and flashbangs and some C4. He was perusing Vicente's limited collection of security system hacking gear when he heard Desmond coming down the wooden steps once more. He had left a couple of minutes earlier, explaining that he needed something from the van.

'Welcome back, _bonita_ ,' Vicente called to him. 'Your friend has done all the choosing so far. Come on, treat yourself. What catches your eye?'

Desmond didn't reply at first, and so Daniel glanced up at him. He was approaching them slowly, staring at the ground, and holding the old shotgun that he'd brought with him in one hand. Without meeting Vicente's eye he held it out and said, 'I need shells. For this.'

Vicente raised an eyebrow in surprise and reached out to take the weapon from Desmond's grasp. There was a short moment of struggle in which Desmond seemed reluctant to let go, but then he allowed his fingers to go limp and his arm to fall back to his side, and Vicente weighed the shotgun in his hands.

'Hmm.' He squinted along the barrel, and then wiped a finger just inside of it, grimacing at the grime that came off. 'A decent model, but kind of old, and not well cared for. Are you sure it even still works?'

'It worked fine the last time it was used,' Desmond replied shortly.

Vicente looked sceptical, but he shrugged and rested the butt of the shotgun on the ground as he waved one hand at the collection in front of them. 'Got a lot of brand new models here. I can recommend one if you-'

'I don't need a new gun,' Desmond interrupted quietly. 'I have a gun already.' With that, he tugged the shotgun back and lifted the strap over his shoulder. 'Just give me the shells.'

Daniel was scowling, able to guess at why Desmond was so attached to the stupid gun and refusing to even consider loading up with more efficient weapons. No matter, he could talk him out of the sentimentality later on. Hell, he'd throw the damn shotgun in a river if it helped Desmond to focus instead of pining after his dead boyfriend.

'I guess that's it, then,' he said to Vicente, as the man handed over several boxes of shotgun shells to Desmond. Reaching into his back pocket, Daniel pulled out a brown envelope with the fat wad of cash in it and handed it over. He'd considered just shooting Vicente in the head and taking whatever he felt like, but he still had hope that the cartel leader might consent to joining them on their mission to infiltrate Abstegro. Besides, if Vicente died, Daniel didn't trust himself not to dip into the cartel's enormous drug stash - or spend the rest of his life drowning himself in it.

'Come on,' Daniel continued, clapping a hand on Vicente's shoulder as he finished counting the green bills. 'Help me move this gear up to the van.'

The two men each grabbed an armful of weapons, slinging strips of rounds over their shoulders and shoving grenades into the pockets of their clothes. They headed up the stairs, but Desmond didn't follow just yet. He stood, holding the shotgun between steady fingers, contemplating it and thinking about what lay ahead of them now. A dark mood had settled over him, and the antidepressants were not enough to keep it at bay. He could not help replaying in his mind that moment in the Kaczmareks' kitchen, the moment when...

A whisper came from the back of the storeroom.

Desmond looked up sharply. He whirled around, his broodings temporarily forgotten as he set all his senses on edge, trying to find the source of the sound. He wondered, in a sudden panic, whether Vicente trafficked in human slaves as well as drugs and guns. If there was someone trapped down here then Desmond could hardly ignore it, even if it meant souring their welcome at the compound.

Taking a few slow breaths, he closed his eyes and activated his eagle vision. As he lifted his lids once more, he noticed them immediately: patches of light shining dimly, muffled by the plaster sealing that had been pasted over the walls of the underground chamber, with one patch shining a little brighter than the rest.

Possessed by a sudden fierce curiosity, Desmond began walking towards the glowing patch of wall, noticing as he did so that the whispering began to get louder. When he reached the wall, he realised that the plaster was partially crumbled away and that there appeared to be something hidden behind it. He reached up, and used his fingernails to pick away larger chunks of wall, thinking vaguely about what Vicente had told him.

_It was already here._

There was a definite shape starting to form where his fingers scratched.

_I'd been running my operation her for about three years before I stumbled over it. It was just some grubby little cave then..._

What an odd coincidence that Vicente, one of the precious few hybrids left of the planet, should have chosen this nondescript slice of desert upon which to build his entire operation. An entire chunk of plaster came away underneath Desmond's probing fingers, revealing a pair of triangles, interlaced.

_Scratches on the walls..._

Clawing obsessively now, blood streaking the white plaster, Desmond tore the symbol free from its bindings and stood back, breathing heavily, as he stared wild-eyed at the shape on the wall. He had seen this before, he had seen it...

'Seventy-two,' Desmond whispered, without thinking.

And like an earthquake, like a volcano, like the screaming of a siren, like the end of the world - that awful familiar voice blasted through his head, fearsome and bitter and vengeful.

_I SEE YOU, CYPHER._

Desmond moaned in pain and clapped his hands over his ears, but it didn't help.

_LISTEN._

* * *

Daniel dumped the first load of weapons into the van and glanced over at Vicente, who was stretching out the muscles in his back casually.

'Should be able to get the rest in one more trip,' Daniel said.

'Definitely, if we can convince your friend to help out this time,' Vicente replied pointedly. Something over Daniel's shoulder caught his eye and he made a huff of surprise. 'Though it looks like he has different ideas.

Daniel turned to look in the same direction, and felt a small burst of irritation as he saw Desmond walking away from the storeroom with a slow, rolling gait, shotgun slung casually over his shoulder, looking for all the world like he was walking in his sleep.

'Hey!' Daniel called, taking a couple of steps forward. 'Get back here, we're not done!' But Desmond didn't so much as turn his head, and Daniel was not inclined to chase after him and force him to help out. He kicked at the dust and turned back to Vicente. 'Kids today, huh?'

'He gonna be OK?' Vicente asked, furrowing his brow as he watched Desmond disappear, swallowed by the glare of the setting sun.

'He'll be fine,' Daniel replied witheringly. 'He'll sulk for a few hours and then he'll take a happy pill and cheer up. If he doesn't, I'll slap some sense into him. Actually, I might do that anyway, just to get back at him for shirking.'

Vicente nodded, seemingly satisfied by Daniel's assurances. 'Alright,' he said. 'Let's finish up. Then you can tell me more about this so-called plan of yours.'

The sun had long since vanished below the horizon by the time Daniel had finished relating, over a bottle of fine whisky, the story of Eye Abstergo, and the Assassins, and the hybrids, and his own flight from both of the secret organisations that had taken him in. Vicente listened to the tale silently, taking particularly large swigs of his amber drink whenever Daniel reached an especially dramatic turning point. When it was finished, Daniel asked Vicente bluntly whether or not he believed what he had been told.

'I wouldn't have,' he confessed, scratching the back of his head. 'Before you showed up here that second time, and did whatever you did to my men. Before crime and unsafe sex disappeared overnight, with no one seeming to notice apart from me. Now ... I guess I can't think of any explanation that's less weird than what you just told me.'

Daniel granted him a tight smile. 'You think the world is better this way?' he asked.

Vicente's eyes grew distant and doubtful. 'It's not better for me,' he replied cautiously.

'But...?'

'But I got a couple of kids. They don't even know I'm their father. I wanted them to be able to live normal lives, away from all this, so I just make sure they got enough money to live on and I drop in to see their mom every now and then. As a family friend, you know?' He stared morosely down into his glass. 'Maybe it'd be better for them, growing up...'

'Slaves,' Daniel interrupted bluntly. 'That's what they are, Vicente. They're slaves, and so is everyone else. You think everyone is suddenly behaving themselves because Abstergo managed to fundamentally improve human nature? No way. They're acting this way because they're on a tight leash, all of them. You want your kids growing up like that?'

Vicente sighed resignedly. 'You want me to come with you, right?'

'I...'

'No. Sorry, amigo, but this isn't my fight. I'll give you weapons, I'll give you whatever you need, but I turned you down twice already and my reasons haven't changed.' He sat back heavily in his chair and took a swig directly from the bottle. 'Besides, your friend seems like a real firebrand. I figure you can handle this, between the two of you.'

As Daniel laughed sceptically, he realised that he hadn't seen Desmond since the kid had walked away from the storeroom. 'Speaking of which,' he said, standing up a little unsteadily. 'I should probably track him down. You got somewhere we can sleep?'

'The cabin next to this one has spare beds.'

'Good. It'll make a nice change from crashing in the back of that van.' Daniel stood up and clapped Vicente on the shoulder. 'Thank you.'

He nodded, his expression troubled. 'I'm sorry I can't...'

'Forget it. I shouldn't have asked.'

In fact, Daniel had no intention whatsoever of heading for Abstergo without Vicente in tow, but he knew that consistently putting pressure on the man would do nothing to help his cause. He would leave the idea, and the guilt of denial, to fester for a few days whilst dropping hints of the terrible fate that might await Vicente's children (an excellent piece of leverage, that information), and allow the topic to come to light again naturally. If Daniel worked him over properly, Vicente would eventually be left begging to join them.

In the meantime, however, Daniel needed to track down the other member of his team. He checked the van first, but it was empty, and so he checked his pistol in its new holster before heading off in the direction that he'd last seen Desmond walking.

He found him a little way outside the settlement, standing on top of a small hill and staring off at the distant lights of Las Cruces. The clear moonlight bounced off the outline of him, harsh blue shadows making him look older and more haggard than he actually was.

'Hey,' Daniel said as he approached, hearing the slur in his own voice from the alcohol. 'Get inside. There are free beds to sleep in, and you need to rest. You look like shit.'

Desmond turned his head slowly, a delayed reaction to the voice that was insulting him. He looked at Daniel and his eyes were glazed and a little vague.

'Right,' Desmond said. He didn't move.

'Now, would be good,' Daniel prompted, exasperated.

'Sure,' Desmond said, still in that same fogged-up tone of voice. 'In a bit.' He turned his head to look back at Las Cruces.

For a moment, Daniel was very tempted to just turn away and leave the idiot standing out here in the cold for the rest of the night, if it suited him. But there was something in this scenario that did not quite sit right with him, and so he hesitated, then spoke harshly.

'Look, I'm not in the mood to play guessing games, so can you just tell me what the fuck is wrong with you so we can fix it and I can go to bed?'

There was another delay of about three seconds before Desmond answered, robotically, 'Nothing's wrong. I'll come inside soon. You go ahead.'

Daniel sighed in irritation and began heading back, pissed that he'd come all the way out here just to get shrugged off by Desmond. He glanced back, just once, as he left the hill behind him, and as he looked back he saw two things, each small, almost insignificant by themselves.

He saw Desmond sway on the spot and almost stumble before catching himself.

Then, on the ground, he saw a tiny white shape that would have been invisible were it not for the moonlight glinting off it.

The two things came together in Daniel's mind and an idea occurred to him: an idea that grew in size, snowballed, and stopped him in his tracks, and swallowed his heart and stomach and gripped them in sudden panic and fury. He stopped walking away, and then he sprinted forward, teeth clenched in anger at himself for being so blind.

Desmond heard him coming and turned his head, blinkly stupidly in confusion, and had just enough time to murmur, "what...?" before Daniel grabbed him viciously by the hair, and forced him to his knees, and threw an arm around him to keep him from escaping. As Desmond struggled and thrashed with sudden fresh energy, Daniel pointed two of his fingers and thrust them into the writhing man's open mouth, shoving them deep inside, pressing on the back of Desmond's throat, just behind his tongue.

For a few seconds nothing happened. Then Daniel felt Desmond convulse in his arms, and groan, and retch, and then vomit was sluicing warmly over the back of Daniel's hand and splattering onto the ground, pearling in the dust of the desert, and Daniel could see small white specks mixed in with the remains of the meal that Desmond had eaten earlier.

With fresh fury, he jabbed his fingers further back into Desmond's mouth, not caring if he hurt the kid, and Desmond shivered and puked until there was nothing left to come up and his entire body was wracked with dry retches and shakes. Conscious of the risk of accidentally killing him through suffocation, and satisfied that all of the pills that Desmond had taken had come up (there were a lot of them - he must have taken everything that was left in the bottle, all at once), Daniel released him and pushed him sideways.

As we watched Desmond gasp roughly for breath on the ground, Daniel reached down and wiped his filthy hand over his companion's T-shirt to clean it. Noticing that Desmond's eyes were closed and he was starting to fall still, Daniel cursed under his breath, reached down, lifted him into a sitting position by the collar of his shirt, drew a hand back and delivered a brutal, back-handed slap to Desmond's right cheek.

The blow had the desired effect. The fresh burst of adrenaline and endorphins forced Desmond's eyes open and he looked around in shock and disbelief. 'What...?' he ground out through his ravaged throat. 'What...?'

Daniel clenched his fist in the material of the young Assassin's shirt, torn between the desire to shake him violently or to keep things simple and just hit him again, when he looked - really looked - at the wreck in front of him and realised how different, how very different, Desmond now was from the man who had walked determinedly across Abstergo's parking lot merely days ago. He was just as broken as he had been then, but the brokenness that had once left him full of sharp edges and fiery potential was now manifesting itself in useless wretchedness.

It occurred to Daniel, the thought piercing through the veil of frustration and anger that had temporarily clouded his judgement, that he was at least partially at fault for what had become of the kid. He had assumed that since brutality and horror had improved Desmond so much from what he had once been, that further harsh treatment would toughen his skin and sharpen his rage just as much as it had done for Innokenti Orelov. But somewhere along the line, without Daniel realising it, Desmond had been pushed past his breaking point. He must have been close to it - at the finest point - after Kaczmarek had died.

And now ... how to reverse the damage? How to fix him? Daniel's talents had never really lain in reparation, and now he find himself a little out of depth.

Desmond's eyelids drooped and his head lolled to one side.

 _Well_ , Daniel thought. _Keeping the kid from dying would probably be a good start._


	20. Chapter 20

'Jus' lemme lie down ... one second.'

Desmond slumped heavily against Daniel's shoulder, and a glance over at him showed that his eyes were drifting closed for about the twentieth time so far. Gritting his teeth, Daniel hosted him up again, shaking him awake in the process and eliciting a discontented groan as Desmond lifted his head loosely. It had taken a full fifteen minutes just to drag him back to the compound, and Daniel was now forcing Desmond to walk up and down the cabin, passing the beds on each pass but refusing to let the drugged-out Assassin to lie down.

'Come on, I'm doing all the work here,' Daniel encouraged, as kindly as he could manage.

'My legs hurt,' Desmond complained vaguely. 'And my head...'

'That's from the antidepressant binge you just went on. Pick up your feet.'

Desmond didn't so much pick them up as he did sort of vaguely drag them along the ground, but at least it was a sign of consciousness. Daniel didn't even know if this was the right thing to do, but he remembered that when Kelly had overdosed he had just sat there and watched her slip into a sleep that she had never woken up from. Actually, he'd pulled the needle out of her vein and shot up with the heroin that was left over in it. At least you could call this an improvement.

'My heart feels weird,' Desmond slurred as they reached the cabin's far wall for the sixth or seventh time and turned around.

Daniel paused for a moment, and then sighed. 'Alright, you can sit down while I check your pulse, but you have to stay awake.'

'Sure, 'kay, no problem...'

The pair shuffled over to one of the beds like some kind of giant, malformed crab. Daniel turned Desmond around until his knees were against the edge of the mattress and then unslung the tattooed arm from around his aching shoulders. Desmond's ass landed on the bed and the rest of him quickly followed as he immediately fell backwards, releasing a quiet sound of contentment.

'Woah, no you don't!' Daniel dragged the kid back into a sitting position, ignoring the protest that followed. He quickly pressed two fingers against the pulse point in Desmond's neck and cursed inwardly as he felt the quivering of a heart that was beating like a frightened rabbit's. Maybe walking around with him had been the wrong thing to do.

Desmond wilted forward, his head landing on Daniel's shoulder.

'Hey, none of that, wake up, look at me.' Daniel eased the kid back, holding into the back of his head to keep him from falling over again, and stared analytically into the deep brown eyes that were barely visible from beneath Desmond's drooping lids.

The kid blinked drowsily, his gaze wandering away from Daniel's face and landing somewhere above his headline. 'Clay?' he mumbled.

'No, it's Daniel.'

'You don't sound like Daniel.'

'What do you mean?'

'You're not yelling at me.'

It may have simply been wishful thinking, but Desmond seemed marginally more alert than he had been. Not alert enough that Daniel was about to risk letting go of him, but there was a little more colour to Desmond's face now, and he was making eye contact, blinking slowly, rubbing at his chest worriedly to in an attempt to soothe his fluttering heart.

'Man,' he said at last, rubbing a hand over his face. 'I'm exhausted. Everything hurts. Can I lie down?'

Daniel bit back a furious response and asked, 'Do you know what just happened?'

A frown was the first reaction to the question and then, 'I remember being in the storeroom. Then ... I was outside, and you were making me puke. Thanks for that, by the way, that was great...'

'I had to get the pills out of you somehow.'

'Pills?' Desmond looked puzzled. 'What pills?'

Daniel looked him over. This could easily just be an attempt to deflect difficult questions, but he knew from experience that Desmond was a terrible liar at the best of times, and the toxic amounts of antidepressants coursing through his system were unlikely to improve his talents in that area. A more likely explanation was that he had mentally blocked out the memory of his suicide attempt until such a time as he was better equipped to deal with it.

Without waiting for an answer, Desmond allowed his eyes to drift closed again, and Daniel shook him gently back to wakefulness.

'I'm sorry,' he said, in a carefully calculated tone of non-combativeness. 'But I can't let you go to sleep just yet.'

'Keep me awake, then,' Desmond challenged drowsily.

'How?'

'Just ... talk to me.'

'What about?'

'Mmm...' Desmond didn't seem to care enough to give an answer. He swayed as much as was possible with Daniel holding him in place, and seemed to doze off for a few seconds.

'Oh, come _on_ , uh...' Daniel dropped down onto one knee, tightened his grip on Desmond's shoulder, and wracked his brain for a topic of conversation that might keep Desmond's brain awake. Surely asking him questions, and forcing him to answer them, might help. What had he said earlier...?

'Tell me about Clay,' Daniel instructed firmly.

It was a little cruel, perhaps, but effective; these, of course, were the memories that would have kept Desmond awake more than anything else, the memories that would have tormented him. Predictably, Desmond's eyes widened a little at the mention of the name, and he looked up at Daniel uncertainly. 'Clay?'

'Yes. Tell me about him.'

For a moment, anger and disgust flitted across Desmond's face. 'You want me to tell you how he died?'

Daniel considered it, but then shook his head. 'No. I know how he died. I want to know why you cared enough about him that you were willing die avenging him.'

'You wouldn't understand, Cross.' The use of his surname came out sharply, deliberately, and with a kind of bitter malice, still tainted by a hint of sleepiness.

'Fine, I wouldn't understand. Tell me anyway. How long did you know him for?'

'A ... not long.' Desmond cast his gaze downwards. 'A few weeks, maybe. But he ... he was all I had, I didn't have anyone else who...' He suddenly squeezed his eyes tightly shut and said, 'No.'

'No?'

'No. You want to keep me awake, you don't get to dig around inside my head as well. Tell me something about you.'

Daniel blinked in surprise. 'Something about me?'

'Yeah. Something true.'

'Like what?'

Desmond looked him in the face and chewed the inside of his lip for a moment in thought before saying, 'Tell me about your parents.

'Bad question,' Daniel answered dismissively. 'I never knew my parents.'

'You don't know anything about them?' Desmond pressed sceptically.

'I know that they were Russian immigrants. I know that they're dead now.'

For a moment, an expression crossed Desmond's face that was quite alien. Not simply because Daniel had never seen the kid wearing such an expression, but because it had been a long time since he'd had someone look at him like that. It was sympathy, barely there, but it existed, and it made Daniel's stomach twinge uncomfortably.

'How did they die?' he asked, his voice suddenly all soft edges.

For a moment, Daniel considered lying. It was something that he always considered before speaking, because lying was often a lot less boring than telling the truth; anyone could recite facts, but it took real genius to spin a story and breathe life into it, making it believable. Then he decided that Desmond wasn't a worthy enough audience to bother putting the effort in, and so he told the truth, in blunt, ugly terms. 'I'm pretty sure Abstergo killed them when they kidnapped me.'

Desmond was still again now, but not because he had fallen asleep. He was staring at Daniel with unguarded curiosity. 'They kidnapped you too?'

Daniel smirked. 'Before you start feeling less embarrassed about getting caught, I should point out that I was only a toddler when they snatched me. Wasn't really much I could do about it.'

'Why would they kidnap a baby?' Desmond asked, his face screwed up in pensiveness. 'Surely they wouldn't...'

'They put me in an Animus,' Daniel interrupted shortly. 'You were Subject Seventeen, right? Well, I was Subject Four. One of the original models.'

'How long did they...?'

'About nine years or so.'

'Jesus!' Desmond seemed to have more or less left his desire to pass out behind him, though he was still rubbing his chest, as though Daniel's revelation had set his heart aflutter once more. 'What did they...?'

'I don't remember any of it,' Daniel interrupted shortly. 'I wasn't supposed to. The whole 'sleeper agent' thing doesn't work if the person knows they're a sleeper agent. If you remember your training then you're just a regular old agent.' He sighed in boredom; he'd already been over this in therapy with Dr Sung, and it had been irritating the first time around. 'I know that I didn't really get a childhood. They locked me inside my ancestor's memories for a decade. I was watching throats get sliced before I was out of diapers, and by the time I was five I would have known a hundred differents ways to kill a man before he drew breath. When I was eleven they had me all programmed up, so they threw me out onto the streets to find my own way. I didn't speak a word of English, and when someone found me I was all malnourished and battered up...'

Daniel paused in the story. Desmond was looking slightly horrified now, and it was tempting to tell him all the gruesome details, just to secure his sympathy and - by extension - a measure of his loyalty. There was plenty that Daniel could tell him: he could tell him about the couple who had found him by the side of the road. About the woman, whose kind and maternal ways had felt weird and foreign to Daniel, and how when she had tried to stroke his hair he had recoiled in discomfort. He could tell Desmond about his first foster home, and about the foster father who would creep into his room late at night and try to climb into bed with him.

He could tell Desmond about the violent, awful hallucinations that had plagued him throughout his sleeping and waking hours, and turned him into a freak with no friends at school, and got him into brutal playground fights where he had no idea who he was pummelling with his fists. He could tell Desmond about all the glue he had sniffed before he was old enough to afford more expensive drugs. He could tell him about the things he had done to earn enough money for drugs. He could tell him about prison: how he'd landed there, and what it had been like on the inside. He could tell him about Kelly, and how cold her skin had felt when Daniel had woken up vaguely horny and tried to rouse her: how he'd stuck his tongue in a corpse's mouth and tasted death there, his brain too stupid with heroin to recognise it.

Daniel could have easily told Desmond these things. Not even all of them: a small handful would have been enough to manipulate him into feeling sympathy, into believing that Daniel was just a poor, lost soul in desperate need of love and understanding. Someone who could be "fixed", the way that Dr. Sung had tried to fix him. In truth, Daniel did not know whether he had turned out the way he had because of his childhood, or whether it was simply genetics. Perhaps he had just been born without a capacity or a desire for friendship or kindness, possessed purely by self-interest, incapable of love. Whatever the reason, he had never felt in need of fixing.

Regardless, he could see that Desmond was partially hooked already, and so he skipped a few years and went on to a more favorable period of his life. 'So eventually I joined up with the Assassins. I was good at it, too. It's in my blood. I was going to become apprentice to the Mentor, but when I met him a flip switched in my brain and I killed him, and I ran away, and I rejoined Abstergo.' He shrugged. 'I bet your daddy told you the rest.'

'You went back to Abstergo,' Desmond repeated in dull tones. 'After everything they'd done to you.'

Daniel shrugged nonchalantly. 'Seemed like the right idea at the time.'

'You're a coward.'

The statement took Daniel by surprise, and he stared at Desmond in consternation, temporarily dumb with it. He'd assumed that he'd reeled the kid in, hook, line and sinker, but here he was throwing out the accusation with harsh, unflustered brutality: a simple, if inaccurate, judgement.

'I'm a pragmatist,' Daniel countered at last. 'What was I supposed to do, go back to the Assassins, weeping for forgiveness? No way. I knew that Abstergo had lots of power, that they could protect me, that they could put me back to sleep so that I wouldn't have to deal with anything. So I went back to them. Then, when they eventually pulled me out of the Animus, everyone treated me like a hero, so I figured I may as well start acting like one.'

'They tortured you, when you were just a kid. They stole your childhood.' It was obvious that Desmond was finding the cognitive dissonance upsetting and impossible to come to terms with. 'Jesus, Daniel, they murdered your parents. Why would you work for them? Why would you pledge your loyalty to them?'

Daniel thought the question over, then chuckled at the memory that came to mind. 'I found this e-mail once, when I was bored one day and hacking through the system. From Warren Vidic. He wrote to Rikkin, and he said that...' He had to stop and pause for breath as he laughed. 'He said that he thought I'd come to think of Abstergo as ... family. Fucking hell. The guy raised me, albeit in a really fucked-up way, but he doesn't know me at all.'

This time, Desmond did not prompt for further details. He simply sat and watched Daniel with hooded eyes, waiting for the story to continue. To his surprise, Daniel found himself quite happy to go on.

'I've met my family, Desmond. My real family. In the Animus, and out in the real world. For a long time, I thought that they were what I was looking for, that I'd feel at home with them. But I didn't, not really. And as for Abstergo, well, they were just the biggest bully in the playground. It just so happened that they grew in strength after I joined them, and so I stayed, and I used whatever they gave me, and I survived. But they were never family, and even if they had been I wouldn't have cared about them.'

Quite suddenly, Daniel realised what Sung had been getting at for all those years, telling him how much better he'd feel if he simply opened up and was completely honest with her. Of course, she'd been trying to get at the soft, vulnerable little boy that she obviously believed was curled up somewhere beneath his abrasive shell, and he'd offered her a cariacture of that to keep her satisfied. He would never have made to her the confession that he'd just made to Desmond: that he was hard and uncaring through and through, and that he had no quivering little inner child that was simply in need of love.

It felt good, to speak the truth.

'Thank you,' Desmond said at last, quietly.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. 'What for?'

'For being honest.'

'Being honest about the fact that I'm a cold-hearted bastard?'

'Yeah. It's useful to know. There's one thing I still don't get, though.'

They'd been talking for so long that even Daniel was starting to feel exhausted, but he nodded at Desmond, giving him permission to continue.

'You joined up with the Assassins because you thought they had something you wanted. You went back to the Templars because they had what you needed.' Desmond twisted his mouth in consideration. 'But why did you stop me in the parking lot? Why did you save my life just now?'

Daniel couldn't help but grin; it was a good question. The kid might actually be cannier than he'd originally thought. 'You might not be the biggest bully in the playground yet, Desmond. But you could be. I saw the way you were looking up at Abstergo, like you'd bite through the walls just to get revenge, and I figured that if anyone can take Rikkin down, it's you. I'm not angry enough. Vicente's not invested enough. But you, you've got that good old righteous vengeance thing working for you, and it's going to take you far, Desmond.'

The kid shivered. 'God, that sounds really creepy coming from you. But thanks.'

'You're welcome.'

'And I assume that you're ready to betray me at a moment's notice? If I stop being useful to you, you'll hand me over. If you lose faith in my, uh, "righteous vengeance", you'll stop having my back and start plunging daggers into it instead.'

Daniel figured it was too late to start lying now. 'Pretty much.'

To his surprise, Desmond smiled: weary, but genuine. 'That's oddly reassuring.'

'It is?'

'Sure. If I'm still alive, it means I'm not a complete waste of space.'

And strangely enough, the kid did look rather calm about the revelation. He also looked less like he was about to drop dead, and was even wrinkling his nose at the smell coming off his vomit-stained shirt, as though he'd only just noticed it. Daniel took a step back, figuring that he could trust Desmond not to collapse now, and watched in dry amusement as the Assassin eased his way out of the garment, trying not to smear his face with his own puke in the process, before wrestling it over his head and throwing it triumphantly across the room, as far away from himself as he could get it.

'OK,' Desmond said at last, rubbing a hand over his face wearily. 'Can I rest now? I think I'm in the clear.'

'Yeah, you should survive the night,' Daniel said, looking Desmond up and down clinically. There was a little more colour in his cheeks now, and the vein in his throat was no longer jumping violently.

Desmond nodded, but didn't lie down just yet. He furrowed his brow and said. 'I meant it, when I told you that I don't remember taking the pills. It's like there's this big black hole in my memory, and something important vanished into it.' The effort of trying to recall it seemed to pain him and he shook his head. 'Ugh. I need to sleep on it. Nothing's making sense right now.'

Daniel nodded and crossed the room, opening a mini-fridge that was standing on top of a chest of drawers and pulling out a chilled bottle of water. He tossed it over to Desmond, and despite his drugged-up state the kid caught it with a deft hand and twisted the cap off before sucking down the liquid gratefully.

'Drink as much as you can,' Daniel said, stripping off his jeans and climbing into the other single bed. 'Your head's gonna hurt like a bitch tomorrow no matter what you do, but the water will help.'

Desmond broke off for air and wiped an arm over his damp limps and chin, looking over at Daniel with a quizzical expression. 'Why are you being nice to me?' he demanded bluntly.

Daniel shrugged as best as he could manage whilst lying on his back. 'I got no reason to be nasty to you. Besides, I'd prefer it if you didn't die in the night.'

'Thanks. That's sweet.' He lay down, too weary to pull the blankets over him, and muttered, 'Night, Daniel,' before finally passing out.


	21. Chapter 21

Despite what Daniel had said, Desmond felt fine. His head didn't hurt at all, his heart had stopped pounding, and his stomach had stopped churning. He laced his fingers together behind his head and stretched out his shoulders as he stood at the door to the cabin. Then, with no real thought in his mind as to where he was going, he turned the doorknob and stepped outside...

And fell.

His mouth opened to scream but no sound came out, and when he hit the ground it didn't hurt, nor did his legs crumple beneath him. He looked around and realised that he wasn't in New Mexico at all. He was back in Rome, underneath the Santa Maria Aracoeli, and strange golden symbols were projected into the air, circling slowly overhead. Rebecca and Shaun were not there, no longer frozen in place, and Desmond realised with relief that their absence must mean they were still alive, somewhere. This was not a place for the living.

Lucy was there, though, sitting on the platform with her legs hanging over the edge, her left foot tucked tidily behind her right ankle as she peered at the ground far below. Desmond walked over and sat down next to her, their shoulders barely brushing.

'Hey, Lucy,' he said calmly, as though nothing had happened.

'Hi, Desmond,' she replied, as though he had not killed her at all. 'What are you doing here?'

'I don't know,' he answered honestly. 'Am I dead?'

She looked over at him, a strand of blonde hair falling down over her forehead as she did so. She tucked the lock back behind her ear and pursed her lips a little in thought as she looked him up and down. At last she said, 'I can't tell. Maybe. Do you want to be dead?'

'No,' Desmond responded immediately, before thinking the question over a little more carefully. 'No,' he said again. 'I'm real tired, Luce, real tired, but I don't want to die.'

She smiled, looking a good deal more relaxed than she ever had when she was alive. 'Glad to hear it,' she said.

Desmond thought about telling her that he hadn't meant to kill her, that it had been Juno who (what was that?) had forced him to do it (a memory of something, just out of reach), but he knew that Lucy already knew that. Instead, he reached out and laid his hand over hers, only to find that he couldn't really feel her skin beneath his. He looked back up at her face, concerned, and found that she was looking troubled as well.

'I don't know if I did the right thing, Desmond,' she confessed. Then she sighed, and shook her head. 'No, I know I didn't. I just ... I don't know what would have been the right thing to do.'

'Not selling us out would have been a good start,' Desmond pointed out, trying to keep his tone jovial.

'Should I have sold Warren out instead? At least when I was loyal to the Templars, it was my own free choice.' Her mouth twisted in sadness, and Desmond tried to squeeze her ethereal fingers in a sign of comfort. She looked up at him with a wry grin. 'Enough thinking in circles. Why are you here, Desmond?'

He was taken aback by the question. 'I just woke up here.'

Lucy socked him lightly in the arm.

'Ow!' Desmond protested, though it hadn't actually hurt. 'What was that for?'

'Think,' she scolded in her best schoolteacher voice, then repeated the words with greater emphasis. 'Why are you here? What am I trying to tell you?'

Desmond looked at her in abject confusion. 'I don't know. Why don't you just...?'

'That would be cheating,' she interrupted. 'That would be against the rules.'

'What rules?'

She sighed again and patted his hand, her touch like a phantom breeze. 'You'll get it eventually. I have faith in you.'

Desmond had no idea what she was talking about, and there was something more pressing on his mind. 'Can you forgive me, Lucy? For what I did to you?'

She contemplated him for a few seconds because smiling, a little sadly, leaning over and planting a soft kiss on his cheek, just by his ear, and whispering. 'No, I can't.'

Desmond sucked in a breath and closed his eyes, feeling hit tears pricking at the inside of his eyelids. 'Please,' he begged.

'I can't,' Lucy repeated, her lips brushing his ear. 'The dead can't forgive. I'm just a memory.'

And with those words, she pushed him gently off and he fell, tumbling slowly through the air, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, flashes of images appearing in front of him and disappearing just as quickly.

He stopped falling and found that he was sitting down again, his hands curled around a cup of coffee, a faint stain of nicotine-laiden smoke hanging in the air around him, and soft grey light filtering in through the grimy window of Harold Kaczmarek's kitchen.

Clay was sitting in the chair where he had died, his hands folded a little protectively over his torso as he sat, leaning back slightly, smirking at Desmond. 'Nice of you to drop in,' he said.

Not knowing quite what to say, Desmond lifted the cup of coffee to his lips and pulled in a mouthful, which he immediately spat onto the table when he found it to be ice cold, so cold it hurt his teeth.

'Sorry about that,' Clay said casually. 'There's no warmth here. Just cold. Sometimes it gets dark, too.'

Desmond forced himself to look up and meet Clay's eyes, and felt a welling of emotion build up in him, raw and painful. 'Clay.'

'Yeah?'

'I just fucking miss you, man.'

Clay tipped his head to one side. 'And you know I'm not really talking to you now, don't you?'

There was no holding them back now: tears tipped over Desmond's lower lashes and trickled down his cheek. 'Yeah,' he replied in a choked, miserable voice. 'That makes it worse.'

'You won't ever be able to talk to me again, and I won't ever talk to anyone else.'

Desmond involuntarily let out a burst of laughter through his tears. 'Geez, you could try sugarcoating it.'

Clay grinned. 'What's the point? You know I'm not really here, that I'm just a figment of your little drugged-up dream, and you know that I wouldn't have bullshitted you about that fact.'

Desmond scowled, brushing an arm over his face to dry it. 'I knew you way too well.'

'Maybe.'

A thought suddenly occurred to Desmond, and he looked at Clay pensively as the dead man dragged his cup across the table and nonchalantly took a sip of the freezing cold coffee.

'What were you going to say to me?' Desmond asked. 'When you stopped me outside of your old school, before you got distracted.'

Clay set the cup down and shrugged. 'Dunno.'

'Oh, come _on_.'

'Scout's honour,' Clay swore sincerely, holding up his three middle fingers. 'You don't know, so I don't know. Not really here, remember?'

'How could I forget, with you reminding me every five seconds?' Desmond replied sulkily. He was struck by another suspicion. 'Were you even a Boy Scout?'

Clay gave a mischievous smile. 'I don't...'

'You don't know, because I don't know, right,' Desmond sighed. He contemplated Clay, his morose mood returning. 'If I died, would I get to see you again? Really see you, I mean?'

A look of sudden sober concern crossed Clay's face. 'Don't talk like that.'

'Would I?' Desmond persisted.

'I don't know, and shut up about it. Don't even...' Clay broke off and rubbed a hand over his own face, as if trying to wipe the emotion from it. 'Just don't,' he concluded in clipped tones.

'But is there...?'

'Desmond, I don't _know_ , alright?' Clay was clearly agitated now, and he stood up, the legs of his chair squeaking over the floor tiles. 'You're not in limbo, you're in your own head, talking to a projection of your own mind that just happens to look like me, and this projection of your own mind is telling you to stow it with the fucking suicide talk. What does that tell you?'

'It tells me...' Desmond's mind raced. 'Either it means I don't really want to die...'

'Good, you got it.'

'... Or it just means I know _you_ would have hated the idea of me killing myself. It might not be a projection of _my_ thoughts at all.'

Clay stared at him, poker-faced, then his body sagged a little, his weight resting on the hands that were laid flat on the table, and he hung his head in defeat. 'You're too good at this,' he said miserably. 'Look, you can find out whether or not there's an afterlife any time you like. You're going to find out eventually, no matter what happens. But until that day comes, you still have so much left to do.'

As Desmond mulled over Clay's words, he find himself squinting in a steadily brighteneing light, and raised his hand to shade his eyes. 'What's happening?' he asked.

Clay looked out of the window. 'Sun's rising,' he replied softly. 'You're going to wake up soon. You're already part of the way there.'

And as soon as he said it, Desmond realised it was true. Somewhere, a long way away, he could hear Daniel moving about the room, but he squeezed his far-away eyes tightly shut to delay the moment a little longer.

'I don't want to wake up!' he exclaimed fiercely. 'I don't want you to go.'

Clay reached over and patted Desmond on the shoulder. 'I'm already gone,' he reminded him. Then he moved his hand up until it rested just behind Desmond's neck, leaned down, and kissed his mouth, firmly but with incredible tenderness. Despite what he'd said earlier, the skin of his lips tasted very warm.

Wakefulness called to Desmond, but before he left he whispered into Clay's mouth, urgently, desperately needing to know, 'Who was that? Who did that? Was it me, or was it you?'

He felt Clay's lips curve against his own.

Then Daniel kicked the end of his bed to wake him up and Clay, the kitchen, and the kiss were all gone in an instant.

* * *

**December 14th, 2012**

'Good. Again.'

Desmond scowled and dropped his arm back to his side, the barrel of the pistol menacing the dust at his feet. 'If it was good, why do I need to do it again?'

'I said it was good, not that it was perfect. You need perfect aim even under stress. Right now you can't even manage perfect aim without stress.' Daniel nodded his head pointedly at the target that had been set up in the distance, the sun shining through the bullet holes in the man-shaped silhouette. 'Again.'

'You think I'm not stressed,' Desmond snapped, half-heartedly lifting the gun again.

By way of reply, Daniel raised his hand and flicked Desmond sharply and painfully on the ear.

'Ow! What the fuck?'

'Shoot the target,' Daniel said in a neutral voice, flicking Desmond's ear again, and then a third time, showing no mercy.

'Stop that!'

'I'll stop when you shoot the target.' _Flick. Flick._

'Ugh, fine.'

Desmond pointed the gun at the target and fired, but he was distracted by the need to duck and lean away from the fingers attacking his ear, and even without looking he knew that he had missed the silhouette, striking an empty section of board.

'You see?' Daniel remarked. 'Not so good.' He flicked Desmond again on the tender, reddening shell of his ear and repeated: 'Hit the target and I'll stop.'

Desmond released a growl of pain and frustration and fired again with deliberate, sulky wildness, the bullet not even striking the board this time, instead vanishing completely into the desert. He cringed, but it did nothing to prevent the impact of Daniel's index finger on his ear.

'Shoot the target,' he heard again.

'Fine!' Desmond half-screamed, and he whirled the gun around and jammed it up and into the concave underside of Daniel's jaw, pressing the cold metal into his pale skin, finger loose on the trigger. He bared his teeth in a dangerous grin, breathing a little heavy, his gaze scanning Daniel's face carefully in an attempt to assess whether or not Desmond had succeeded in giving him a fright.

Daniel paused, his whole body stilling. He did not lower his hand, but instead straightened two of his fingers out into the shape of a gun and pressed the tips of them against the side of Desmond's head, his lips curving into a grin.

'Boom,' he said softly. 'You're dead.'

Desmond snorted. 'Is that some kind of dig at me for hesitating?'

'No. It's a dig at you for not remembering to count your bullets.'

The smirk slid off Desmond's face, and after a pause he lowered the gun away from Daniel's head, pointed it at the target in the distance, sighted carefully along the barrel and pulled the trigger, hearing the hammer click down on an empty chamber. Feeling a little embarrassed, he held his hand out for another magazine, only to find his fingers wrapping around the neck of a beer bottle instead. He glanced over at Daniel in confusion.

'You can take a break,' the ex-Templar announced, removing the cap from his own bottle with his bare hands.

'I don't need a break,' Desmond argued. He'd actually wanted one, but being offered made him feel as though Daniel suspected him of weakness, and he found the implication offensive. 'Besides, alcohol isn't exactly going to help my aim.'

'You've earned it,' Daniel said simply, taking a seat on the makeshift wooden bench, beside the rest of the guns and ammunition that had been brought out for target practice.

Desmond raised an eyebrow and removed the cap from his own beer with deft hands, the motion coming back to him naturally, as though he'd been away from Bad Weather for hours, not months. He took a swig of the beverage, finding it unpleasantly warm but not bad-tasting, and wiped the suds from his mouth with his forearm. 'I haven't earned this,' he stated bluntly.

'Sure you have.'

'You can quit being nice to me, it's just plain weird.'

Daniel grinned around the rim of the bottle as he took another sip of his beer. 'You want me to go back to hitting you and throwing you in freezing fucking rivers?'

'Don't you have, like, something in between those two approaches?'

Daniel paused for a moment, before deliberately changing the subject. 'We can't raid Abstergo yet,' he reminded Desmond. 'We have to hold out until the solar flares have passed. Plenty of time to perfect your aim.'

'Would go a lot faster if we had an Animus.' Desmond stared thoughtfully at the ground. 'I wish I'd gone through the memories of a more recent ancestor now, one who used guns. Ezio had a crossbow and this wrist-mounted pistol thing, but I guess they're too different to modern weapons, or I just didn't spent long enough...'

'Look, I wish we had an Animus too,' Daniel interrupted with rising irritation in his voice. 'Trust me, I'd like to crawl inside of one of those things for good, go back to having no responsibility at all, just reliving other people's decisions. But I'm stuck with you and we're both stuck in 2012 and our only way out of it is by putting a bullet between Rikkin's eyes and smashing that goddamn Apple for good.'

Desmond watched him, trying and failing to get a fix on what was going through Daniel's mind. 'And what will you do once Rikkin's dead? Do you get to be Alpha Templar? Is that how it works?'

'We'll deal with that when we come to it.' Daniel's expression was inscrutable.

'No.' Desmond's temper began to flare up. 'How about we deal with it now? I'm not risking my life just so you can stab me in the back once the deed is done. For all I know, you'll just take the Apple and start ruling the world for yourself.'

Daniel grinned at him slyly, and then picked up the pistol that Desmond had been practicing with, slotted a fresh magazine into it, and handed it over.

'Probably a good idea to perfect your aim, then.'


	22. Chapter 22

  **December 21st, 2012**

 What you doing up so early?'

Desmond started in surprise, and then relaxed a little as he saw Vicente approaching, a steaming mug of coffee in each hand. The cartel leader handed one over, which Desmond took gratefully, wrapping his cold fingers around the warmth of it before looking back up at the early morning sky. He felt the bench flex slightly as Vicente sat down next to him, and realised that the man probably had no idea what the significance of today was.

'Right now,' Desmond explained. 'There are massive solar flares happening. They would have destroyed the entire world, all of it, but there's a planetary shield device in place keeping us from being affected.'

'You're shitting me,' Vicente accused, after a moment of stunned silence.

'Wish I was.'

Vicente whistled between his teeth. 'Man. Guess we're lucky we got that shield?'

'Yeah,' Desmond replied thoughtfully. 'I guess so.'

There followed a comfortable silence, in which Desmond stared up at the stars and Vicente drank his coffee. In truth, Desmond had been terrified that the Shard would fail them, and that in spite of everything the planet would burn, him along with it. He had been torturing himself with the question of whether it would have been better to trust Juno, to hand control of Earth over to her, instead of to Abstergo. But what good were such thoughts now? It was too late for any of that.

'You're the quiet type, huh?'

'Huh?' Desmond looked up in surprise.

Vicente grinned, his startlingly white teeth glinting in the low light. 'Ever since you two got here, Daniel's the one who's done most of the talking.'

Desmond thought this over. 'Wow, I guess that's true. Weird. No one ever accused me of being too quiet before.' 

'No?'

'You wouldn't believe the number of times I've heard the words, "Shut up, Desmond."

This prompted a chuckle from Vicente, followed by a more sombre expression. ''I guess a lot has changed.' He looked down at his coffee thoughtfully for a few seconds before stating, quite matter-of-factly, 'I'm coming with you to Abstergo.'

Desmond glanced over at him. 'Daniel got to you, did he?'

'Ha. No, he's still in the early stages of putting pressure on me. Daniel knows his game, and it probably would have worked sooner or later, so I figured I may as well save him some time. Besides, I...' He blew out a breath and furrowed his brow. 'I have nothing left now. Nothing to lose. I can't even go and see my own kids. Unless we fix this mess, I spend the rest of my life with nothing, and I don't trust you and Daniel not to fuck this up if you go by yourselves.'

'Thanks.'

'No problem.'

It occurred to Desmond that there was a very good chance that Vicente would die on this mission, and that if he did he would never see his kids again anyway. It occurred to Desmond that the right thing to do would be to convince Vicente to stay here - to tell him that they didn't need him, that he should stay safe. Finally, Desmond realised that he had no intention of telling Vicente any such thing. After all, what was Vicente, but a cutthroat cartel leader, responsible for God only knew how much death and misery. If anyone was low enough to be used as a human shield in a firefight, it was Vicente.

For a moment, it felt almost as though Daniel's fingers were clawing at the inside of Desmond's throat once more. Because that, he could see, was what was really happening. Daniel had found the open wound left in Desmond by Clay's death, and had poked and prodded at it, widening the damage, hardening the scar tissue - first with cruelty, then with feigned kindness - until what was left behind was stronger, but uglier. A person who was willing to tread over the corpses of his allies in order to reach his goal.

He wished that he had the energy to care, or rather, he wished that he had the energy to wish. In all honestly, Desmond now felt disconnected from himself. He had felt this way ever since the suicide attempt, the one that he couldn't even remember committing, let alone the exact reasons behind it. He knew, in a numb, detached sort of way, that he should be horrified by the fact that he'd tried to kill himself and could not remember why or how, that he should be terrified that it might happen again. But in all honestly, he just couldn't bring himself to care.

Was that depression, or was it the anti-depressants? Desmond was still taking them, the doses now measured by Daniel and handed to him twice a day, but this didn't feel like it had before. It felt there was something deep inside him, something awful that he should be afraid of, but wasn't.

'I gotta be honest,' Desmond said at last, hearing the false sincerity in his own voice. 'I'm glad you're coming with us, man. I really think we stand a chance now.'

Vicente looked over at him and grinned, the expression heart-breakingly open. 'Come on,' he said, standing up. 'Let's get some breakfast.'

* * *

**January 1st, 2013**

'Load up,' Daniel said. 'And leave that fucking shotgun behind.'

They were in the central yard, the supplies that they would be taking along mostly piled in the back of the van, with a few boxes still scattered around. Desmond had Harold Kaczmarek's shotgun balanced on his shoulder, one hand on the stock to keep it steady. He gripped it a little tighter and glared at Daniel. 'I'm taking it along.'

'It's a piece of shit.'

'We tested it yesterday,' Vicente interjected mildly. 'It's old but it works the way it's s'posed to.'

'It's dead weight,' Daniel barrelled on, not breaking eye contact with Desmond. 'Shotguns are for retards who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn on a cloudless day in June. You're too good a shot with the pistols to be weighing yourself down with a shotgun. If anyone actually gets into the kind of range where a shotgun would be worth a damn, just take them out with your blade.'

'So I'll carry the shotgun and use a pistol.'

'What the fuck is the point of carrying a gun that you're not going to use?'

'I'm going to use it to blow Alan Rikkin's goddamn head off,' Desmond snapped coldly.

Daniel stared for a moment, and then rolled his eyes. 'Oh god, this is a _sentimental_ thing, isn't it?'

Desmond averted his gaze.

There was a moment of silence in which neither of them moved, simply stood facing each other in the cool sunlight. Daniel let out a sigh of utter impatience, then held out a hand.

'Give it to me.'

Desmond tightened his grip by another small fraction. 'Why?'

'If we're bringing it along then I'm going to be the one to carry it. Your best assets are your speed and your aim, and I'm not having either of them compromised. I'll hand it back to you once we reach Rikkin, and then you can perform whatever sad little symbolic act you like.'

'You don't want to kill him yourself?'

Daniel looked at Desmond with derision. 'As long as he ends up dead, I'm happy. I don't give any particular kind of fuck as to how it happens.'

Desmond's eyes were wary as he he pulled the shotgun forward, off his shoulder, cacthing it by the barrel as it slid down over his chest. He held it there for just a moment, before finally holding it out to Daniel. The older man snatched it off him, rolling his eyes, and walked over to the van.

Daniel hadn't asked whether or not Desmond was ready for this. He didn't need to. The day before, Desmond had lined up eight empty cans on blocks of wood, walked a hundred meters away from them, then taken a deep breath, turned and fired eight times. He hit every single one, dead on. The day before that, he and Daniel had sparred brutally and Desmond - bloody-lipped and panting evenly - had managed to pin the older man to the ground, one thumb pressed into his eye socket warningly. The mixture of fury and delight on Daniel's face had been enough to tell Desmond that he this hadn't been a thrown match.

Despite the short amount of time that they'd been here, Desmond could feel that he was stronger. The lean, toned muscles on his arms and back and torso had thickened, and the change in the way that he moved felt like he'd had a new set of batteries installed. Inside the Animus, small twitches and seizes in his muscle groups had prevented him from losing any mass, but it was no substitute for daily training.

That thought - the thought of daily training - suddenly brought back memories that he had long since discarded. Memories of his childhood, and of sparring with the other children, and feeling his resentment grow along with his muscle strength. A sudden pang struck Desmond's heart - of fear or regret, he couldn't tell which - as he thought of his father, and of Rebecca and Shaun. They were surely at the same headquarters that he, Daniel and Vicente were planning to attack. What would happen if they got caught in the crosshairs? It was hardly an impossibility, for Rikkin would almost certainly send familiar faces out to halt Desmond's progress throught the building. Could he really head out on this mission without warning them? Wasn't there some way that he could get them to leave - just temporarily?

Desmond glanced over his shoulder at where Daniel was standing by the van, talking with Vicente, and deliberately moved around the side of the building so that he would not be seen. He had succeeded in swiping Daniel's phone from his bedside table, knowing that he wouldn't have brought it along unless it was untraceable. He swiped the screen to bring up the unlock request, and quickly used his eagle vision to peer in at the phone's memory of the correct code.

He paused for a moment, once he was in. _This is dumb_ , he thought to himself. _There's no way he's still using the same phone_ , he added, as he entered the number with fumbling fingers. He's not going to answer, he concluded, lifting the phone to his ear and holding it there as he listened the dial tone.

It had only rung twice before he panicked and started thinking about hanging up altogether. He dropped it away from his ear and held it in the palm of his hand, thumb hovering over the red button that would disengage the call. He listened to it ring, the sound dissipated and tinny in the open air, a third time, then a fourth, and then resolved to hang up.

Then the fifth ring never came.

Desmond stared stupidly at the phone, waiting for the electronic dial. He almost jumped out of his skin when a voice came through the small speakers instead, sounding like a whisper.

'Hello?'

_Fuck it._

Desmond lifted the phone to his ear again. 'Dad?'

A pause. 'Desmond. Where are you?'

A nasty, cold feeling curled in Desmond's belly at the words. He knew why his father was asking him that, could almost hear him being compelled by the Apple, even with all the distance between them, and it was more vile then he could ever have imagined. In a sudden panic, Desmond fumbled the phone away from his ear again and hung up, already regretting the decision.

Wiping his eyes hurriedly, he peered around the side of the building again, just in time to see Daniel frown and pat down his pockets. Desmond quickly shoved the phone back into his pocket and walked briskly across the compound, heading towards the cabin where they had slept. So long as he returned the phone in time, Daniel would never know what had happened.

* * *

One of the many benefits of controlling the Apple was the ability to be confident in the knowledge that no one would ever disturb him unnecessarily. And so, when Alan Rikkin heard the knock at the glass door of his office, he looked up and gave a genuine smile, beckoning with one hand to invite his employee in.

'William,' he greeted in a courteous tone, watching the man approach his desk. 'You have that report on the situation in Nepal already? Admirable.'

'Actually, I'm here for another reason,' the grey-haired former Assassin leader said evenly. 'I just received a call from my son.'

Rikkin's eyebrows shot up into his hairline. 'Desmond? Really? He's still alive?'

'Apparently so.' William didn't sound particularly elated by the news. His expression was slightly vacant, as though the cognitive disconnect between what he wanted to do and what the Apple was forcing him to do was too great to handle. He had been kept in the Animus, and then under heavy observation, for much longer than any of the others. The fact that he'd never shown any signs of breaking free from his mental shackles, and was even able to function perfectly well as a member of the Templar order, was a testament to the success of Eye Abstergo.

'Hm. To be honest, I'm amazed that he made it,' Rikkin mused. 'Did he tell you his location?'

'No, but it doesn't matter,' William replied. 'I know my son, and he wouldn't have called unless he thought he was heading into a life-threatening situation. He's planning to come here, to try and take the Apple from you.'

Rikkin raised and eyebrow and smiled. 'Really? How sad. He might have lived a reasonably long life as an outlaw.' He was already running over instructions for security in his mind. 'Thank you for letting me know, Bill. If you get to him before anyone else, make sure he sees your face before he dies, understood?'

'Yes, sir.'


	23. Chapter 23

**January 2nd, 2012**

'This is the worst last supper ever,' Vicente commented, picking up a limp slice of pizza and watching forlornly as a globule of grease rolled over the patina of cheese and pepperoni before dripping onto the cardboard.

'Hmm?' Desmond mumbled, his mouth stuffed full of food and his eyes closed in ecstasy. He wasn't too fussy when it came to pizza.

They were parked a street away from the Abstergo headquarters, and Desmond had insisted on getting some food before they went in - if only because he didn't want to die on an empty stomach. Vicente, as the only one of them who could safely be seen in public, had fetched the pizza from the nearest takeout place. Now they were sitting in an odd circle in the back of the van, surrounded by guns and ammunition, using boxes of grenades and rockets as chairs

Daniel hadn't touched the food at all, simply stating that he worked better on an empty stomach, and was carefully studying a plan of the building that he'd drawn from memory.

'We trigger the fire alarm remotely he said, without looking up. 'Most of the people in the building will clear out into the parking lot, leaving us clear to go in through the basement. We need to get as far as possible with the minimum amount of fuss, so once we're inside we take out the security cameras and any other monitoring systems that we can. I don't expect we'll get all the way to Rikkin's office without being spotted, but the closer we get, the greater the chance there is of at least one of us surviving.

Desmond rolled his eyes. 'That's optimistic.'

'It's realistic, there's a difference. We're massively outnumbered and you're basically just dead weight, so...'

'Screw you.'

'I guess if push comes to shove you'll make a nice, broad human shield. Want another slice of pizza?'

'Alright, girls,' Vicente interrupted grimly. He wiped his fingers on his jeans and nodded at the pair of them, his jaw tight with a nerve jumping in them. 'We know the plan, yes?'

Desmond nodded in the affirmative, and Daniel gave a small, aborted jerk of his head.

'No point in putting it off any longer then.'

They had parked the van right next to an alleyway, one which contained the manhole they would use to access the sewer, which in turn would lead to the basement of Abstergo HQ. The building was built on old foundations, which explained the sewer access, and Daniel had brought with him the security codes required to get in that way. If the codes had been changed, they were also carrying a pound or so of plastic explosives.

Desmond shrugged a double gun holster over his shoulders, and then pulled his jacket on over it. It was lightweight and dark in colour, designed to let him move fast and hide in shadows if he found any. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Daniel slide Harold Kaczmarek's shotgun into a holder on his back, and Desmond felt his stomach tense uncomfortably as he realised that he was already considering the fastest way to remove the weapon from Daniel's body if he was killed. To distract himself, he grabbed two light pistols with silencers and slid them into the holster before grabbing a few extra magazines.

Vicente was hunched over a smartphone of all things, whistling through his teeth as he stroked the screen. 'This is what they get for going digital,' he commented aloud, glancing over at Desmond. 'If they had old-fashioned fire alarms, I'd never be able to do this.' He tapped at the screen one final time and, after a short pause, they heard the shrill of an alarm ringing out through the air.

'Showtime,' Daniel said grimly, pulling his hood up over his head and shouldering his way out of the back of the van. He was loaded up with guns and carrying a crowbar, which he used to lever the manhole open. Desmond jumped out after Vicente, who leaned down to help Daniel move the heavy metal disc to one side and set it down next to a garbage can in near-silence.

Peering down the hole they'd exposed, Desmond saaw a set of old iron rungs leading into the darkness. He clicked on a heavy-duty torch and flickered the light down into the dank depths of the sewer, looking up at Daniel and Vicente with a grin.

'After you,' he said, with false deference.

Daniel rolled his eyes and dropped down onto the ladder with easy grace, Vicente hesitating before following him. For a short, mean moment Desmond considered replacing the manhole and driving off in the van to lead the life of a runaway. Then an image flashed across his mind, of the Kaczmarek kitchen splattered in blood and viscera, and he felt his facial muscles seize up into a grim expression.

By the time they reached Abstergo, Desmond was light-headed from lack of oxygen. It was his own fault: as soon as his sneakers had hit the concrete floor of the sewer, the smell had hit him in a wave and he'd drawn his hand up into his sleeve and clapped the material over his face defensively. Even Daniel had wrinkled his nose in discomfort as he led the way, but Vicente hadn't seemed all that bothered by it.

'We got about thirty cows back home and they dedicate their entire lives to four things: eating, sleeping, shitting and farting,' he'd commented robustly when Desmond had asked him how he could stand it. After a pause he added, 'Occasionally fucking too, though I swear they're farting the whole time they're doing that as well.'

Desmond shook his head. 'Glamorous life of a crime lord,' he said, his voice muffled by his sleeve.

'Quiet,' Daniel commanded sharply, pressing his ear up against the metal door in the small alcove that they'd found themselves in. Apparently this was the emergency-emergency-emergency exit to the building: a very last resort, in case all the other exits were blocked. There was a keypad set into the wall next to it, and Daniel flexed his fingers before reaching up and gently tapping in the code. There was a quiet beep, then the light above the keypad turned green and the door opened a small fraction indicating that it was unlocked.

'Lucky,' Vicente said drily, without much sincerity.

'Yeah, I don't like this,' Daniel agreed, scowling. 'The codes should have been changed since I left. Something's not right.'

With a sense of unease, Desmond thought back to the brief telephone conversation with his father, and wondered if he should tell the other two men about it. He knew that Daniel possessed enough self-control that he probably wouldn't turn homicidal outright, but there was a possibility that Vicente might refuse to go with him if he knew there could be an ambush ahead. Desmond stayed quiet.

'Let's go,' Daniel said softly, drawing a gun and easing the door open gently.

They came out at the bottom of a set of stairs, which they followed upwards until they found themselves in an underground parking lot. There were quite a few cars, but no people, and an eerie silence reigned in the concrete expanse of the place.

Daniel jerked his head, by way of communication, and they followed him over to a bank of elevators on the far side of the parking lot. The deadness in the air began to make Desmond feel jittery, and he drew a pistol as though the weight of it in his hand might make the hairs on the back of his neck lie down once more. It was a relief to reach a wall and to be able to press his back against it, and he reached out with one hand to press the call button for the elevator.

He was stopped by Daniel, who caught his wrist and glared at him. 'You want to announce our presence?' he demanded in a scornful whisper.

Desmond glared at him. 'I'd _like_ to get a little bit higher than the basement.'

Daniel was still holding the crowbar, and instead of responding he let it slide down through his palm until he was holding it fully extended. Then he set it into the thin gap between the two metal doors and leaned his weight on it, grimacing as the doors parted with a painfully load screech.

'You fuckers want to help out at all?' he asked tersely.

Vicente hurried forward and grabbed one door, Desmond the other, and between them they managed to pull them apart. The elevator was nowhere to be seen, and there was a drop of about six feet or so down into a complex system of protruding machinery.

Daniel squeezed past the other two men and swung himself easily around onto the wall, using a protruding metal panel as a handhold. He reached out and grabbed Vicente's hand, pulling the other man through and helping him secure a place on the wall of the elevator shaft. Vicente's door slammed into place with a groan of relief and, realising that he was on his own, Desmond braced himself before leaping through and landing on the opposite wall. The second door slammed shut, and they were left with nothing but the dim, red emergency lighting.

'The alarm's stopped,' Vicente commented, his voice a little strained, and Desmond noticed with a start that it was true. He listened carefully for any voices echoing down the elevator shaft, but there were none.

'We should climb,' he said in a low whisper, as though worried they'd be overheard. Deciding that he was sick of Daniel taking the lead, he began hauling himself up the wall, grateful for the many cables, rungs and divets that made the ascent a breeze. It may have been a while since he had been inside an Animus, but his muscles had not forgotten how to climb quickly and efficiently. He even had to occasionally slow down a little to allow Daniel and Vicente to catch up.

The elevator shaft was a closed space, meaning that they could not see what was happening on any of the floors, but the entire building was still and quiet. It made Desmond feel extremely ill at ease. Even with the fire alarm going off, there should have been a few guards still hanging around - there should have been _someone_.

'Box is up ahead,' Daniel said, breathless and sounding more than a little relieved. Desmond glanced upwards and saw that, indeed, the elevator was directly above them. As though they could sense the end of the climb was near, his muscles began to fatigue and Desmond hurriedly pulled himself hand-over-hand up towards it.

With groans of relief, they each scrambled onto the roof of the elevator. By Desmond's estimate, they had to be at least fifteen floors up, and he'd hoped that they would be able to take the elevator the rest of the way. When he asked Daniel if this was the plan, however, the older man shook his head grimly.

'We'd need a key card to get it working, and I don't have mine any more. We get out through the doors and take the stairs the rest of the way.'

'And if we run into anyone?' Vicente asked in clipped, tense tones.

'Kill them,' Daniel said bluntly.

Desmond hesitated. 'What if...'

'It doesn't matter who it is,' Daniel barrelled on, fixing Desmond with a fierce glare that was made more intense by the lighting which cast a devilish red glow in his hair and eyes. 'I don't care if it's your goddamn father. He won't hesitate to shoot you, so you don't hesitate to shoot him.'

Desmond gritted his teeth, knowing that what Daniel said was true and hating it. Looking down, he opened the hatch on the top of the elevator, dangled his legs over the edge and hopped through.

'Wait there for a second,' he called upwards. 'I'm going to scout out the corridor, see if anyone's there.'

No reply came, and he didn't wait for one. Desmond leaned forward and pushed the button with the <|> symbol on it. The doors slid open.

A dozen gun barrels were slowly revealed, one after the other.

Bill Miles was standing in the middle of them, his arms folded and a distant expression on his face. Like some kind of clockwork puppet, he lifted a finger to his lips and then made a beckoning gesture, as the guards around him audibly tightened their fingers on the triggers of their guns.

Desmond felt a lump in his throat so heavy that it hurt to breathe around it. As if hypnotised, he took a couple of steps toward his father, until they were only a foot apart.

Desmond glanced at the guards around him, looked past the uniforms, and realised with a jolt that Shaun and Rebecca were among them. They weren't fighters, not really, so Rikkin must have planted them there to make Desmond more hesitant.

'Call to your friends,' William Miles whispered softly, his eyes hard and grey and vacant. 'Tell them the coast is clear.'

It was too bad for Rikkin that he hadn't yet met the _new_ Desmond Miles.

Moving too fast for the guards to comprehend, Desmond twisted around suddenly, grabbed his father by the hair and - at the same time - yanked one of his pistols from its holster, whipping it up and ramming the barrel of it harshly into the underside of Bill's jaw.

' _Guards!_ ' he yelled, as loud as he could, backing away and dragging his father with him, the surrounding men and women with guns forced to part around him. He caught Rebecca's eye as he passed her, but found no recognition or softness there.

Bill was trying to gurgle something, but Desmond suspected that it would be an order to shoot, and so he pushed the gun harder against his father's larynx to keep him from speaking. The guards exchanged hesitant glances, and then one of them (thankfully, no one that Desmond knew) was thrown violently against the wall in a splatter of crimson. The others turned back to the elevator in alarm as bullets began to whip out of it from where Daniel and Vicente had launched there attack.

Thinking fast, Desmond wrapped a hand around Bill's throat and took the gun away for a moment. He took aim, closed one eye, and then fired three times. Rebecca screeched in pain as blood exploded from her left thigh and fell to the ground, her gun skittering away. Shaun took the next two bullets: one through the hand holding his gun, the other directly into his kneecap. He dropped like a stone, and Desmond quickly returned the gun to its original position at the underside of his father's head. His friends might be crippled for life, or they might bleed to death, or Daniel and Vicente might decide to shoot them anyway, but taking them out of the fight had been all that was within Desmond's power.

Realising how exposed he was, he gripped Bill firmly and dragged him backwards, away from where the remaining guards were firing endlessly into the lift, occasionally being spun backwards by a returning bullet, and around a corner. There he slammed his father up against a wall and held him there by his throat, glaring at him furiously.

'You told them I was coming,' he accused fiercely.

Bill simply stared at him with the same intense, yet curiously absent, expression.

'You're my father, you _fuck_. You would have had me killed. You would have...'

Suddenly Bill jerked an arm upwards, bringing a hand towards Desmond side, and out of instinct he swung his gun around and slammed the butt of it into his father's temple. Bill dropped like a puppet with broken strings, which was probably not far from the truth, and slid down the wall to lie slumped in a half-seated position. His eyes had drooped shut and Desmond could see from the slowing pulse in his throat that he had fallen unconscious.

The immediate danger gone, Desmond became suddenly aware of a more pressing worry. He grimaced and looked down, pulled aside his jacket and found that a hole had been burned into the shirt underneath it. As though in a trance, he lifted his shirt as well and found it: a small, round puncture in his body, just underneath his lowest rib, pumping blood out in time with his heartbeat.

There was a gun lying loose in Bill Miles' fingers.

'Fuck,' Desmond said aloud, then laughed at how astonished he sounded. He was feeling a little light-headed, which had to be from the shock. He hadn't lost all that much blood yet, not all that much...

Desmond poked his finger a little way inside the bullet hole. It hurt, though not as much as it probably should have, and he was a little bit fascinated to feel the softness and gooeyness of his own insides. He kept the finger lodged in there, blood oozing out around it, as he leaned forward and used his blade to make a tear in Bill's shirt, ripping at it with one hand to get at the fabric. Age had not put much fat onto William Miles' belly, but there was silver hair there, and very pale skin underneath.

Desmond could still hear gunfire, though it was less frequent now. It sounded like there were not many people left fighting. He heard the blast of a shotgun and realised that Daniel must still be alive, at least.

Pressing a thick wad of material over the bullet wound, Desmond strapped it into place with strips of his father's shirt, feeling the pain starting to come in earnest as he did so. He wrapped many layers around it before tying them off in a messy knot and pulling his shirt down over it. All this he did as though in a dream, as though watching someone else do it. From one moment to the next, he was certain that this must be a deadly wound, and then equally sure that it was barely more than a graze. He had no way of knowing which was true. If there was stomach acid seeping into his veins, travelling to poison each and every one of his organs, would he be able to feel it?

Either way, there was little more to be done. When he was certain that his intestines weren't about to start spilling all over the floor, Desmond placed his palm flat against the wall and pushed himself upright, sucking air in through his teeth as the felt the uncomfortable ooze of blood escaping him and the wrenching pain that came with it. It was manageable, though, for the moment, and so Desmond picked up his gun again and peered around the corner.

There was one guard left. He had taken refuge behind a trash can and Desmond could hear his whimpers of fear, could hear them right up until Desmond took careful aim, resting his gun hand on the wrist of his other arm for support, and put a bullet through the back of the guard's skull. The man jerked forward and slumped down awkwardly with whatever was left of his face pressed against the metal of his ineffectual cover.

Satisfied, Desmond heaved himself up the corridor just as Daniel emerged cautiously from the elevator. In front of them both was a massacre, with the four of five guards still breathing clearly in no position to do any fighting as they lay on the mangled bodies of those who hadn't been so lucky.

Shaun was directly in front of Daniel, clutching at the mess of his knee with his shredded hand and whimpering softly as he drifted towards unconsciousness. Daniel looked down at him in vague amusement for a moment, then pressed the barrel of the shotgun against the side of Shaun's head, nudging him with it like a cat playing with a wounded mouse. Shaun's head flopped loosely on his neck and he made a distant, discontented noise.

Without hesitating, Desmond moved his own aim upwards so that his gun was aimed squarely between Daniel's eyes. 'No,' he said, in an astonishingly calm voice.

Daniel glanced up at the gun, unfazed, but nonetheless moved the barrels of the shotgun slowly away from Shaun's head and raised his eyebrows in a facsimile of innocence. 'Fine. But we'd better get a move on or they'll all bleed out and die anyway.'

Desmond made to argue, but then looked down at his friends - Shaun and Rebecca - ashen-faced and hovering somewhere between pain and oblivion. He thought of his own wound, hidden underneath his shirt and jacket, and tried to estimate how long he had left before he bled out completely.

'Vicente?' he asked in a strained voice, though he already knew the answer to the simple question. Really, he'd known it ever since Vicente had told him of his decision to come along for the ride.

Daniel didn't bother to make a verbal reply, but instead simply jerked his head back at the elevator from which they'd emerged. Desmond walked around slowly until he could see inside.

Vicente was lying face-down, a fact that - based on the state that the back of his skull was in - Desmond knew he should be grateful for. He waited to feel a sense of sorrow or guilt, but instead all he could see was the back of Vicente's shirt and the patch of crumpled, slightly damp material there, as though he'd been grabbed by someone with a sweat-slick palm and yanked into the path of the bullet that had killed him.

'Are you alright?'

Desmond started at the question, thinking for one stupid moment that Daniel was asking after his emotional wellbeing. As he turned, however, he saw the older man looking at him with suspicious eyes, tracking over his arms and legs and torso in search of injuries.

'Fine. They didn't get me,' he replied in a nonchalant manner, deliberately blocking out the throbbing pain where the bullet had punched through his side.

Daniel was silent for a moment, his eyes running over Desmond one more time. 'Good. How do you feel about heading up to Rikkin's office and blowing the fucker's head off?'

Desmond's body cried out in protest at the concept of actually moving, but he forced a smile and replied, 'Let's do it.'

* * *

It was quiet, and everyone knows how that cliché ends. Desmond and Daniel crept silently up staircases and empty hallways, the barrels of their guns preceding them around corners. Desmond told Daniel to take point, which left him free to grit his teeth with every step and every jarring of the hole in his side. Every so often his vision would start to go a little white and fuzzy around the edges, but he forced himself onwards. They were too close to give up now.

'Up ahead,' Daniel said at last, nodding towards a set of double doors ahead of them with a plaque reading ALAN RIKKIN, CEO over it. Desmond swallowed hard and nodded, and they both approached the entrance.

'You think we should knock?' Desmond asked drily, when the automatic doors remained firmly closed.

'Wasn't planning on it,' Daniel replied, pulling a small electronic device out of his pocket and holding it up to the smooth keypad on the side of the door. When it was about an inch away it leapt forward quickly, like an insect, and as soon as it touched the panel numbers began whirring over its glaring digital screen, punctuating the air with the occasional beep.

'Reckon he's in there?' Desmond queried in a half-whisper.

'I'm sure of it,' Daniel replied, speaking normally. 'I suspect we're walking into a trap.'

'Didn't we already do that?'

'That was the first trap. He'll have a back-up plan.'

'If I were him, my back-up plan would be a private helicopter on the roof.'

Daniel grimaced. 'He's too proud to run. Too arrogant. He thinks he's got us right where he wants us.'

'Does he?' Desmond demanded bluntly, feeling another wave of nausea hit him.

The two of them shared a glance. Daniel's expression was inscrutable, and Desmond was gripped with unease, with the permanent reminder that he was on a mission with someone whom he would never dare to turn his back on.

A final loud chirrup came from Vicente's hacking device, and the doors slid open smoothly.

Rikkin was standing with his back to them, but turned at the sound of his office being violated and twisted his mouth disapprovingly, as though disappointed in them for showing up late. He opened his mouth, no doubt to begin making his big speech.

Desmond raised his gun, sighted along the barrel until he had a clear shot at Rikkin's head, and fired.

He'd had no intention of allowing Rikkin to start talking, having yelled at the screen during a hundred action movies where the hero let the villain mouth off for several minutes instead of just shooting them. Unfortunately, Rikkin had learned a few tricks of his own while Desmond had been on the run; a strange glass orb in his hand flickered briefly, and the bullet bounced harmlessly away from him.

'Mr Miles,' Rikkin said, calm and cold-eyed. His gaze slid sideways a little. 'Daniel.'

Desmond slumped against the doorframe. 'Crap,' he muttered. 'We gotta listen to the speech.'

'So nice of you to drop by.'

_Oh, it's going to be bad._

Daniel took a few steps forward, unslinging Harold Kaczmarek's shotgun from his back and aiming at at Rikkin from the hip. Desmond felt a sudden twist of defiance in his gut (or perhaps that was just more blood loss) and felt an urge to demand that Daniel hand him the weapon and let him do the deed, but in truth he didn't trust himself to speak at that moment. Trying to press a hand against his side with subtlety, he followed Daniel into the room.

'Hand over the Apple and we'll let you live,' Daniel said, clearly get into the spirit of bad action movie dialogue.

Rikkin hummed thoughtfully at the demand. 'May I suggest an alternative?'

'Fuck you,' Desmond snapped, his voice surprisingly. 'Get fucked and die, you fucking goddamn pain in the ass _dick knuckle_.'

It wasn't the wittiest of comebacks, but Desmond was tired and the brief tirade did at least succeed in making Rikkin blink a few times, temporarily derailed. After flicking a disdainful, dismissive eye over Desmond, he turned all of his attention to Daniel.

'So,' he said softly. 'You've come home.'

Daniel took another step forward, his finger tightening on the trigger of the shotgun. He didn't reply. It wasn't a question, after all.

'You didn't need to run, Daniel,' Rikkin continued, still in the same amiable tone of voice.

'I know, but I kind of like this whole 'being alive' thing,' Daniel quipped.

'You think I would have had you killed?' Rikkin sounded hurt, as though he was offended that Daniel had thought so little of him.

Daniel stared at him for a moment, and suddenly he looked uncertain. 'Yes, I did. I do.' But the barrel of the shotgun wavered a little.

'Oh, Daniel,' Rikkin continued, a hint of amusement edging into his voice. 'If you had concerns, you should have just spoken to me. I can't believe you... how long have we known each other? We're family, you and I.' He took a few steps closer to Daniel, looking entirely unperturbed by the weapon he was holding. Rikkin raised the glass Apple slightly. 'This thing, this... genetic quirk that you and I share, it only reaffirmed what I have always believed. You and I are cut from the same cloth, and you've been lumped together with the likes of Vidic for too long.'

'What are you saying?' Daniel asked, but there was a greedy glint in his eye, as though he already knew. Rikkin saw it too, and smiled openly. Without taking his eyes off Daniel, he stepped closer to Desmond, who raised his pistol defensively.

'Back...' He decided to give up on the warning and simply fired off several shots at Rikkin. This time he saw the shield: it lit up, faintly blue, as it repelled the bullets and send them spinning into the walls. It extended about half a foot in front of Rikkin, and Desmond could have sworn that he actually felt it press against his skin, like a kind of electricity, as the Templar closed in.

With dreadful timing, Desmond felt his vision begin the fuzz out and sounds around him begin to dim, and as he clawed his way back to clarity he saw Rikkin's fist flying towards him too late. His cheekbone exploded in pain and his head snapped to one side. Then there was a hand in his hair, gripping and twisting, and another squeezing his wristbones together cruelly until the gun clattered to the floor. Desmond barely had any defences left when Rikkin kicked him behind his knee and sent him dropping down, held back from a nosedive only by the hand in his hair.

Desmond looked up blearily. Daniel hadn't moved at all.

'What are you saying, Alan?' he repeated, curiously.

'I want you to come home,' Rikkin said, sounding like he was providing the voiceover for a tourism commercial. 'This is where you belong, and frankly things haven't been the same since we lost you and your particular... skills.'

'And since you took over the world?' Daniel was smiling a little now. Desmond glared at him furiously, but couldn't catch his eye.

'That too,' Rikkin laughed. 'You know what I'm proposing.' He raised the Apple once more. 'If you think you've held power in the palm of your hand before, then you really need to feel the real thing. I can give you that. I want you, Daniel. I need you to come back to us, and I think you know that it's in your best interests to do so.'

Finally, Daniel glanced down at Desmond, his gaze cold. He looked tired. He looked tempted.

'Deal,' Daniel said at last.

' _No!_ ' Desmond screamed in frustration, desperation, exhaustion. 'You fucking _idiot_ , don't you see what he's...?'

'I see that he's got you on your knees like a bitch,' Daniel interrupted coldly. 'You want me to pick you over him? Maybe you should have practiced your shooting a little more.'

Rikkin chuckled good-naturedly. 'Would you like to do the honours? I'd like to start talking business as soon as possible.'

Desmond never heard the reply, but he saw the barrel of the shotgun swing towards him, until he was staring into the blackness of it, like a dark cave where a vicious wild animal was waiting. He realised that this must have been the last thing that Clay had seen, before his own father shot him. That look of shock and fear and betrayal, this was what had caused it.

As though he'd been struck by lightning, Desmond's blood suddenly boiled. He screamed in utter rage and flexed his hand, triggered the blade mechanism, and stabbed it down as hard as he could into Rikkin's fancy leather shoe, penetrating his foot with a satisfying crunch. He barely heard the man's scream of surprise before it was drowned out by the dreadful, all-consuming roar of the shotgun.

The hand in Desmond's hair was torn away, taking a few hairs with it, and Rikkin fell backwards in a graceful arc, landing with a quick succession of thuds on the beautifully lacquered floor of his office. His right hand hit the boards last, falling open limply, and the glass Apple rolled over the small hill of his fingertips and trundled away across the floor. Desmond knew that he was immune to the powers of the artefact, but even so he thought that he felt a small snap of something inside him as Rikkin's grip on the world ceased.

A wave of exhausting relief came over him, leaving him weak enough that he was driven to his knees, feeling suddenly quite cold. Unconsciously, he reached a hand inside his shirt and pressed it to the clumsy bandage inside, feeling dampness where his blood had soaked right through.

The gentle rumble of the Apple rolling away came to an abrupt stop.

With great effort, Desmond lifted his head and turned it, just in time to see Daniel straighten up, seeming impossibly tall in his dark clothes, his skin glowing a little from exertion. He rolled the artefact contemplatively between his fingers and looked at it, before turning his razor-sharp gaze onto Desmond. 'You're injured,' he said, matter-of-factly.

Desmond shook his head. 'No. No, I'm not. I'm just ... glad it's over. Look...' He brought one foot forward until the sole of it was planted firmly on the floor, leaned on his knee with one hand and made to push himself back into a standing position. He got about halfway up before a knife slice of pain cut into his middle and he crashed to the ground again, screaming between his teeth and curling his limbs inwards.

With his cheek and temple pressed against the floorboards, he saw Daniel's boots approaching. Desmond groaned in frustrated agony as he was turned over onto his back and Daniel roughly unzipped his jacket, pushing it aside to look at the blood soaking into the shirt underneath.

'Well,' the blond man commented mildly. 'At least this makes things easier.'

Anger surged through Desmond and he spat drily up at Daniel's face. 'Fuck you,' he seethed.

Daniel didn't reply, didn't even smile. Keeping the Apple held firmly in one hand, he ran the other up over Desmond's shirt, up his throat, and then pressed his fingers against Desmond's cheek and a thumb underneath his jaw.

'Please,' Desmond stammered quickly, panicking. 'Please, please, please ... you don't have to do this. I never wanted this shit in the first place, remember? Let me go and I'll never come back, I won't ... I'll just...'

'Sure thing,' Daniel interrupted quietly, his fingers tightening hard enough to bruise. 'Just close your eyes. I'm not a sadist. I'll make it quick.'

For a fleeting moment, Desmond dared to hope that perhaps Daniel was merely messing him around. After all, they'd travelled together, slept mere meters apart from one another with no fear for their lives and eaten at the same table. Desmond had spared Daniel's life on more than one occasion, and Daniel had saved his. Daniel had shown him how to shoot straight, had given him the training which had enabled them both to make it all the way to Rikkin's office and take him out. Surely that counted for something? Surely Daniel wouldn't break that bond?

Of course, he knew that all this was bullshit. Daniel had been completely candid about his character and his intentions. He would have no more trouble over killing Desmond than he would swatting a fly, and once the deed was done he would take the Apple and use it for god only knew what.

Daniel breathed in, and then used his grip on Desmond's face and jaw to spin his head upwards and back, with a sharp and sickening crack.

Desmond howled at the sudden, brutal pain and waited for death, but above him he could hear Daniel cursing through the darkening pall.

'Shit. I must be out of practice. It's really your fault for tensing up, you know? If you could just relax a little you'd be dead already.' He sighed and leaned back far enough to pull one of his guns out of its holster. 'Guess I'll have to do this the messy w-'

He paused, the gun still only half-drawn, and looked down in a mixture of puzzlement and annoyance at his side, where Desmond's hand was wrapped around his rib cage, bent backwards awkwardly at the wrist so as to allow the blade to sink fully into Daniel's torso. For a moment, Desmond could have sworn that he felt it in his fingertips as Daniel's heart stuttered in surprise.

Daniel made an odd, irritated grunting sound and with great effort managed to pull his gun the rest of the way out, manoeuvring it up towards Desmond's head. 'Fuck's sake...'

Desmond desperately twisted the blade ninety degrees clockwise and the gun slipped out of Daniel's hand as he grimaced and toppled over sideways, releasing the Apple and scrabbling to pick up his weapon with one hand, using the other to loosely grip Desmond's throat.

They lay there struggling for several moments, each connected to the other by the left hand like some kind of ridiculous set of conjoined twins, Desmond bleeding profusely from the bullet hole in his stomach and at the same time feeling Daniel's blood running down his wrist. He scratched at the backs of Daniel's fingers with his free hand and managed to beat him to the gun, using a very tenuous grip to toss it away. As it skittered over the floorboards, he cursed himself for not just picking it up and using it.

Daniel tried for a few more seconds to push down fatally on Desmond's throat, before finding himself too weak and giving up on the endeavour entirely. He pulled in air through his exposed teeth and glared at Desmond, his expression softening a little into one of bitter amusement.

'Touché,' he huffed tersely.

The smooth floorboards underneath them were already slick with blood, and almost absent-mindedly Desmond began wiggling the blade around inside Daniel, trying to use the sharp edge of it to rupture something fatally. It wasn't easy; the damn thing was really jammed between two ribs and it was difficult to get any kind of...

'Stop,' Daniel growled.

'Oh, I'll make it stop,' Desmond promised, still trying to work his blade deeper into Daniel, though he could feel himself growing weaker by the second.

Daniel let out a low grunt, then twisted his entire body violently, dragging himself off Desmond's blade. When it came loose his blood arced wetly through the air and splattered across the floorboards where the pressure had built up behind it, but as Daniel collapsed onto his back he clamped a hand against the crescent-shaped slice to stem the flow.

Rolling his eyes and gritting his teeth, Desmond forced himself up onto his hands and knees and began crawling slowly over to Daniel, determined to sink his blade into the man's throat this time and finish the job.

'Wait,' Daniel panted, his boots scrabbling on the floor as he tried to move backwards and away from Desmond. His skin was very pale and his blond hair was spiky and matted with blood, probably someone else's. For the first time since Desmond had met him, Daniel looked like he had run out of options. His limbs weren't obeying him; he couldn't get away.

Desmond caught up with him and swung a leg loosely over Daniel's thighs, straddling him and pinning him in place. Daniel thrashed weakly and Desmond grabbed him by the hair, pushing his head roughly against the floor and exposing his throat. He watched in a kind of fascination as the Adam's apple in Daniel's throat bobbed frantically under his skin, and Desmond pressed the point of his blade against it.

With his head held back, Daniel looked down his cheeks desperately at Desmond and managed to catch his eye. The two men paused for a moment, breathing heavily.

'You won't kill me,' Daniel grated out hoarsely. 'You never could.'

Desmond laughed, and saw his own blood drooling onto Daniel's face.

'There's a first time for everything.'


	24. Epilogue: The Scorpion and the Frog

Daniel Cross had never been a religious man, save for that one confused month in high school when he'd started lusting after a Catholic girl in his class, but when he opened his eyes blearily and saw nothing but white above him, just for a very short moment he thought to himself, _Well, this is a surprise_.

He pressed his chin down to his chest and saw that he was also wearing some kind of white robe. Then he looked up, to check for a halo, but there was nothing save for his usual scrappy blond hair.

At this point, Daniel's body seemed to twig to the fact that he was conscious, and it promptly presented its list of complaints to him in the manner of an indignant landlord. He groaned quietly as pain spiked in his torso, in his muscles, in his head and in his dry, cracked lips, and the tiny sting of an IV in the crook of his elbow.

He rolled his head to one side and saw the metal bar of his IV stand. Behind it, out of focus, he saw a shape in the infirmary bed next to his own. He blinked a few times and squinted, until he realised with alarm who it was.

Desmond was dressed in a plain white T-shirt and jeans, sleeping in his clothes on top of the blankets. One hand was resting protectively over his stomach, over a barely-visible padding of bandages that covered the hole in his body where the bullet had entered. His dark hair was mussed from tossing and turning on the pillow but his face was relaxed and peaceful.

After a moment of contemplation, Daniel clumsily swung his right arm over to the small table by his bed, picked up the first thing he found (a plastic beaker), took aim and then threw it at Desmond's head.

It bounced off the young Assassin's left temple and dropped out of sight onto the floor, but it did the trick. Desmond wake with a start, slapping a hand to his head, and looking around for the source of his distress.

Daniel made to wave, and instead found his left hand stopped short with a clatter. He looked down and found with a scowl that he was handcuffed to the rail of his bed.

'You're finally awake,' Desmond said, his voice a little rough. He had swung his legs over the side of his bed, and was observing Daniel with his arms folded a little defensively. Daniel looked back at him and noticed the shadows under his eyes that were picked out by the harsh fluorescent lights.

'And alive,' Daniel shot back, wanting to get to the heart of the matter as soon as possible.

Desmond took his time before responding. He stood up, and Daniel saw a small grimace of pain as he did so, and the way he moved gingerly. Internal damage? Had he lost an organ, or had the wound merely been superficial?

How fast would he go down if kicked in the right spot?

'You passed out before I could cut your throat,' Desmond replied at last. 'There was no hurry to kill you, so I stopped to use the Apple, to call for help.' He stepped closer to Daniel's bed, staying out of arm's reach as he looked down with his mild brown eyes. 'By the time I'd turned my attention back to you, I'd lost my enthusiasm for killing.

'I figured it could wait. An ambulance arrived, and took us to a hospital along with the survivors. I used the Apple to keep them from asking questions. I thought about using it to convince a nurse to put an air bubble in your veins, kill you nice and quiet. But I was tired, and so I waited a little longer.'

Despite the pain he was in and the humiliation of being shackled, Daniel smirked. 'Told you that you'd never be able to kill me.'

'I thought about doing it earlier as well,' Desmond continued calmly, his gaze flicking over Daniel's face and body. 'Smothering you with a pillow. Shooting you up with something. No one would question me. Then I realised why I hadn't killed you yet. Why I stopped before killing you all those times before.'

'Because I'm too pretty to die?'

The shadow of a smirk teased the edges of Desmond's mouth. 'Not every problem can be solved by killing someone.'

Daniel turned this over in his mind a few times and decided that it was in his best interests not to argue with the sentiment. Instead he asked, keeping his voice steady, 'So how do you intend to solve me, Desmond?'

Desmond looked down at the bands of metal tying Daniel down to the bed. After an interminable pause he slipped a hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small key. He then picked up Daniel's wrist and held it still as he pushed the key into the lock of the handcuffs and turned it with a satisfying click. It sprang open, and Daniel quickly pulled his hand free before Desmond could change his mind. He looked up uncertainly, feeling out of his depth.

'Can I leave?'

'If you like,' Desmond replied cryptically.

'What's the alternative?'

'Well, you could stay.'

Daniel laughed. He couldn't help himself. 'How many times have I double-crossed the Assassins now? I've betrayed you, personally. I've killed your fellow Assassins. I've tried to kill you. I would have killed your friends. Rebecca, Shaun...'

'You didn't,' Desmond interrupted calmly, and Daniel realised that they must have made it out of Abstergo alive. Perhaps that was why Desmond hadn't killed him yet.

'I tried to,' Daniel pressed on, eyeing Desmond scornfully. 'You'd take me back, as an Assassin, after all that?'

Desmond retreated, went back to sit on the other bed in the Assassin Den's infirmary. From a distance he looked at Daniel appraisingly before finally saying, 'I assume you've heard the old fable about the scorpion and the frog.'

'You think I'm going to sting you and sink us both?'

'No. That's not the lesson of that fable, not really. I trust you to act according to your nature, and your nature is to act in your own best interests, always. Right now, it would be in your best interests to work with us, to make us even stronger than we already are.' Desmond smiled, with the bitterest of humour. 'You and I... We'll keep each other afloat. You'll be the most useful Assassin in the brotherhood, at least right up until the point you see me show weakness.'

'You think that's a good thing?'

'I think it will keep me from becoming weak.'

'Wouldn't you prefer to have someone a bit nicer watching your back?'

'I don't need nice. I need _you_.'

Desmond's grin was vaguely wolfish. Daniel hesitated, then sat up in bed and swung his legs over the side, mirroring Desmond, staring at him as an equal before returning the smile.

'You're the biggest bully in the playground now.'

Desmond simply nodded. 'It won't be an easy life,' he warned. 'We've got a big mess to clean up.'

Daniel pressed a hand to his side, feeling the bandages over the curving smile that Desmond had cut into his flesh.

'We'd better get started then,' he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read, left kudos and reviewed.


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